While I studied abroad in Italy, some of the biggest learning moments I experienced were outside the classroom.

For the first time in my academic journey, I balanced an internship where I worked 20 hours a week with a full course load. On top of that, I also maintained a social life, visited museums, and attended special lectures. I even traveled most weekends to explore my beautiful host country! I was really only able to experience Florence and Italy so thoroughly due to excellent time management skills that I was forced to develop so I could maximize my time abroad. One of the biggest tips I learned for maintaining this time management was prioritizing tasks based on the proximity of the event. Since I could always return to something far away later while I was inevitably in the area again, choosing events clustered near each other allowed me to minimize the commute between activities, therefore allowing me to have very dense days filled with various experiences.

While I was in a new place, I chose to embrace the new ideas, foods, and activities wherever I could. Although I always liked trying new things, being in Italy I tried foods I never would have tried at home because it was in a new preparation. I tried crostini, thinking it was like the “gray stuff” from Beauty and the Beast, and it was only after tasting it, eating it, and smiling satisfied, did I learn I had chicken liver and anchovies on a piece of bread. Had you asked me before my experience abroad, I would have answered I didn’t like anchovies and was not even willing to try liver. I also tried lampredotto, a tripe prepared in a classic Florentine style, and cacciucco, a fish soup. I also learned to cook with new ingredients; I experimented with green pumpkins and broccoli pesto. To keep trying new things, I always sampled in small bits. While I could have cooked with ingredients I knew nothing about and in methods I knew nothing about, I found that much change at a time to be overwhelming. Instead, I tried to do one small thing a day, maybe a new food or a new preparation but not both, and this allowed me to find something novel about each day so I could remember something different about every day.

Finally, I grew to enjoy my alone time much more than I did before. I am a people person to my core, so I often like having someone to do activities with. Even though I was surrounded by other students who were in similar classes to me and also interested in Italy, I often struggled to find people who were interested in the same museums while also available at the same time as me. This meant I often attended activities, especially museums, on my own. As I got more comfortable with this, I also took myself out to dinner and even did solo trips. Eventually, I learned to even prefer solo trips since I didn’t have to compromise on activities to do and explore exactly what I hoped to see in a specific place. This complete control made my experiences more memorable since I could look forward to every detail of a trip and feel the gratification of each successful moment. 

These skills may not be unique to exclusively study abroad, but the rich stories and unique memories I made learning how to manage my time, try new things, and value my independence allows the lessons to stick even more.