Reflections on Rome

To create a community in eighteen days is no simple feat. Thirty-three students. Three faculty. For it to succeed everyone needs to arrive open to the possibilities of a new place and new people. It was exciting as students grew, shared ideas, and explored Italy together.

Picture: Winter in Rome 2017

Eighteen days away from the comforts and support of home changes a person. For many it was the first time being away. It was a financial risk, which meant working extra hours to save up, but all thirty-three students returned to the United States bettered by the investment. For some it was based on what they learned in the classroom. For others, the outings to Borghese Gallery, The Spanish Steps, The Forum and the Papal Audience shaped their experience. Others still found the weekend in Florence and the snow-topped mountain town of Assisi formative.

Despite the early morning wakeup call, the trip to Pompeii seemed to be the most revelatory to students. They had all heard of a city covered in ash, but the sheer size of it impressed them. Walking in the streets of a city abandoned 1500 years ago; experiencing the beauty but understanding the deep tragedy of the location moved the students.  That’s what studying abroad is about, at its root: to be emotionally stirred by a culture or world previously beyond a student’s scope of understanding.

Some students walked barefoot on the shores of Sorrento in the rain, others wrote poems about places they would never visit again, all of them will carry these eighteen days for the rest of their lives, regardless of the path they travel.