Study Abroad 2018
In the summer of 2018, I spent a month in Florence, Italy, with the UF College of Journalism and Communications. This month-long program also took us on weekends to Rome, Capri and Venice, while also giving me enough free days to also explore Cinque Terre, Verona and Bologna. My journey taught me how to be self-sufficient, solve problems and stay positive during long train rides. The strength of the professors teaching my classes and the great friendships I made truly made this one of the best months of my life.
Travel Reporting
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This elective class was all about travel blogging. We were given six categories (art, architecture, history, fun places, food and fashion), and wrote a 1,000-word blog per category about something we experienced in Italy. I loved this class because I discovered my passion for travel writing here. I learned how to describe a place with enough detail to make someone else want to go there too. I also enjoyed the creativity aspect of trying to write about the different categories. For example, for the architecture category I wrote about the Ponte Vecchio, a famous landmark in Florence; other classmates wrote about the same location for the history, fun places and fashion categories. Multiple people covering the same topic led to some of my most creative writing.
To read what I wrote, check out my study abroad portfolio page here.
Public Relations Writing
This class was so enjoyable because of the international spin we decided to add to it. This course is designed to build our writing portfolios as PR students to use when we apply for internships and jobs. Because we were in Italy while completing this class, we all decided to pick an Italian company that works in the travel and tourism industry. I created my portfolio around hypothetical work I would have written for VisitFlorence.com. This website is a destination marketing organization for the Tuscany region, so I focused my efforts on writing to promote the area as a whole. I really enjoyed writing in styles and formats that I didn't have any experience with previously, and I'm glad to bring this experience to the table in any interview.
To read my final portfolio from this class, check out my study abroad portfolio page here.
As I hinted at above, this study abroad experience had a huge impact on my career path. While I was taking those two courses, I realized how much I enjoyed working in the tourism sector. I have always known that I love to travel, and I've always considered it to be a fun industry to work in, however during this trip I realized how many opportunities there are for communications specialists. Every single hotel, attraction and restaurant has some sort of public relations or customer relations service where they need someone with PR skills. My current career goal is to work for one of these companies, or a destination marketing organization (like VisitFlorence.com), which works to promote the destination as a whole, instead of specific attractions at a place.
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As an anthropology minor, I was already aware of how seemingly innocuous things from everyday life aren't actually "normal." Spending an extended period of time in another country truly opened my eyes to how weird "normal" American life is. For example, grocery shopping. In Italy, I ended up visiting a supermarket daily in order to pick up what I needed for dinner that night. This was a huge challenge for me because I'm the type of person who prefers buying enough food for two weeks every time I visit a grocery store in Florida. I had to change the way I thought about food for that whole month. Another cultural shock came from the way Italians consume American media. A friend and I attended a movie while we were in Florence (it was in English, and there were Italian subtitles). In the middle of the movie, the theater paused the film and there was a 10-minute intermission. Neither of us were expecting that, and were very surprised when the movie stopped in the middle of an important scene. These two experiences simply highlight how I took things from my own culture and past experiences as a given for every other culture.
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A third and final way this experience changed me shines through in my ability to rely on myself. Before I left, I never would have thought that I would take a day trip to a different city by myself. By the end of the trip, I was so excited to see everything that I could that I took off, even when my free day didn't align with any of my friends'. Traveling to Bologna by myself was a great experience, and I'm so glad that I took that change and was able to successfully navigate myself there and back, as well as plan a full day's itinerary of things to do there. Another aspect of this comes though in my practical problem solving experience. I often took charge of a group of up to eight people to plan a day trip during our free days. I consulted other friends and various travel websites to plan itineraries that included what everyone wanted to do on top of all the usual sights to see.
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In conclusion, this study abroad experience broadened my horizons in expected and unexpected ways. I learned so much that whole month, both in my classes and outside in the city. I will always treasure this experience, because it proved to me that I can go out and do things like travel and successfully live in a foreign country where I don't know anyone. In fact, feeling like an outsider was one of the best parts of the whole trip. It's important to remember that people and cultures exist outside of the American bubble, and this study abroad experience truly showed that to me.