As my semester in Rome draws to a close, I’ve started thinking about what I’ll say when my friends and family ask about my study abroad experience. I remember last year hearing juniors use words like “life changing,” “incredible” and “eye-opening,” to describe their semesters, and I how excited I was to experience the same things they had. I wrote a cliché application essay about how challenging yet rewarding it would be to live in a foreign city, to study a new language and immerse myself in local culture. I figured that these were the ways in which my trip would be life changing. However, looking back at my semester in Rome, these are not the things that have made this trip so meaningful, although they have definitely contributed. What I have found most rewarding about my semester in Rome has been my experiences with new people, both American and European. This trip has changed the way I think about other people, and the way I think about myself.
I came to Rome knowing only one other person. At first I was jealous of my friends heading off to other places in packs, and I questioned whether it might have been smarter to do a more popular program. But now that the program is nearing a close, I realize that coming without a lot of friends has worked to my advantage. Not only have I been forced to get to know new people, I have been able to present myself to these people only as myself, not in relation to anyone else or by who I am at Duke. It has made me reflect about the labels that I let define me at Duke, and given me perspective about the ones that actually have any bearing on who I am.
It has been interesting for me to think about the different people that I’ve become close with on this trip, and how these friendships may not have occurred under any other circumstances. There are a number of factors that influence who we become with at Duke – our clubs and sororities, our classes, and even less obvious factors like our background and socioeconomic status. In Rome these factors are less apparent, and I’ve been forced to think about what I really look for in friends, and the kind of people that I’m truly attracted to. For example, in my Italian class I’ve found that I have much better conversations with the artsy girl with bright blue hair than I do with the preppy girl who grew up two towns over from me. It’s exciting to realize how many people there are in the world that I can connect with when I keep an open mind, and I feel like my world has expanded.
A few days ago, I took taxi home alone across Rome. I’m usually pretty quiet in taxis, but this ride was an exception. The driver and I talked animatedly about his job, Rome, his family and Italian food. He told me about his 15-year-old son who desperately wanted a Vespa, which the son would never get because my driver claimed his son would crash it in the first hour. I told him the same argument was going on in my house between my 16 year old sister and my parents about a car.
This trip has shown me that when I stop thinking so much about the differences between myself and other people, I can connect with far more people than I thought possible. My time in Rome has given me the chance to make some of these connections, with people ranging from the Roman taxi driver to other college students, and this is what has made my trip so meaningful.
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