Once upon a time, there was a girl who lived a very normal life. She grew up with a mom, a dad, and four siblings in the quintessential American suburb. She played with Barbie’s and American Girl dolls. Her parents signed her up for every single sport so that she could find the one she loved. As she grew older, she found her friends, received straight As in school, and joined a top level soccer team. In high school, she went through drama most teenagers experience. A few friends were lost along the way, but she felt all the better for it. Those former friends did not mesh with the person she was, the person she wanted to become. She exited high school with a sigh of relief, hopeful that her next adventure would be much better than this chapter. She went through high school as the normal girl who played sports, got good grades, and had a lot of friends in many groups. But she had spent many weekends at home without invitations from those friends. She felt trapped in a personality her classmates thought she should have. Wake Forest would be different. No one from her high school went there. She could have a clean start. Wake Forest became everything for this girl. She was still the girl that played soccer and got great grades because those were two parts of her she could never leave behind. However, she was now also the girl who was willing to laugh a little louder, to be a little unguarded, and to unleash her true sense of sarcastic humor. She received executive positions as a sophomore, found friends that accepted her and pushed her to be even more outgoing, and felt happy. Yet, she thought is this it? Is this where I stop growing until I graduate and move on the next chapter? Having grown so much in two years, she refused to accept stagnation. She submitted her application for a study abroad program, knowing full well her best friends were not applying. She got accepted a few weeks later and immediately sent in all the confirmation forms. Four months later she would look back on this decision and smile, knowing it was the best thing she could have to done to extend the journey to herself.
As the semester comes to its end (it pains me to actually write that down), I have begun to look back upon my time in Europe to see if I will be leaving as I came or if I’m leaving as a better version of my former self. During their visit, my parents told me that I have grown up a lot here and that they are very proud of how independent I have become. I have seen practically all the places in Europe that I had come here hoping to visit. I have completed all the tasks I set out for myself in our COM exercises. Have I learned all that I possibly could about actually living in the “real world” here?
Yes, I still live under the roof of Wake Forest University, but I didn’t have their meal plan. I didn’t have a campus that I could never leave because I don’t have a car. I didn’t have my best friends, even though they made sure I video chatted with them every week. At Casa Artom, I learned how to truly rely upon myself for managing responsibility with desire in both my travels and monetary spending, for eating and maintaining my health, and for respecting the wishes and needs of 22 other people. Most importantly, I made new friendships, forced myself to interact with the community outside of the “Wake Forest bubble,” and rediscovered my reserved side and how to balance it with my more outgoing side. When we were instructed to pick an adjective for our website, I made that adjective my personal guide, the path I should take to find the next layer of myself. Looking back, I exhibited characteristics of my responsive citizen, using my surroundings to instruct my growth.
My first task of coming abroad was to develop new friendships. I have learned, through close proximity, everyone’s strengths. At the beginning of the semester, I felt slightly isolated from everyone because it takes me longer to be comfortable with sharing myself. Now I wish that I had opened up sooner. Everyone in this house is incredibly unique, and they each bring out a different quality in me. From Ulyshala, I’ve learned how to laugh, especially at myself. Chelsea and I are both rather shy people, so when I traveled with her to Budapest I learned more about making decisions faster. Also, when she starts to walk faster, she is telling you that she is a little sketched out by someone or the neighborhood. When she does that, I know that I should find a different route to make her feel more comfortable. From Hannah’s dance moves at our dance parties downstairs, I discovered that it was okay to let loose and be awkward in front of everyone in the house, and I mean this in the best way possible! With Sam, I found a person to have intellectual and silly conversations with, a person to vent to. I can give you examples like these from each and every person in the house, a tribute to how much it has meant to me to have these exact people as my teachers for this semester. Looking back, I would not ask for a different house, would nott ask for my best friends to be here. My housemates mean so much to me and have helped me grow throughout this semester. I responded to their cues and have become a better version of myself. I feel as though I have finally struck a stable balance between my reserved and extroverted sides.
I grasped at the first opportunity that I had to travel outside of Venice, and I haven’t stopped grasping since then. Over the course of four months, I have been to seven different countries and nineteen different cities from the United Kingdom to Eastern Europe. Besides London, each city represented something completely foreign to me, not to mention that I had a language barrier in every place. By the middle of the semester, my language barrier in Italy faded away as I began to speak more in Italian. After talking to a person who works at a gelateria, I learned that Italians dislike tourists who do not make an attempt at speaking the language. Since then, I have made a conscience effort to speak more Italian. I feel as though this small act improved my relationships with local Venetians who could see that I was trying to adapt to their culture. I also made it a point to look up the basics – hello, goodbye, excuse me, thank you – for each country I traveled to in order to allow the people to maintain their own culture. From my travels, I also learned what it meant to be truly organized. I printed out directions from airports and train stations to hostels, mapped out places that I wanted to visit before I arrived somewhere, brought copies of confirmation emails in case a place lost my reservation, and learned to ask people for directions. These tasks were extremely tiring, and I know greatly appreciate all the effort my mom puts in on our family vacations. More important than preparedness was the lesson I got on accepting glitches in plans. No matter where I travelled, one thing always went awry. My former self would either cry that I had messed up, plead with my partners to stick with the itinerary, or try extremely hard to fix the situation. Now, I am open to being more spontaneous and to accepting that certain things are out of my control. On a trip to Budapest with Chelsea, the first hotel we stayed in was not like its pictures online. Former me would most likely have cried in this situation and wouldn’t have known what to do. Instead, we looked at the situation calmly, realized that there was nothing we could do about false advertising, and booked a new hotel where we felt more comfortable. After this mishap ended, we were able to relax and enjoy our time. I had learned how to be more rational, rather than immediately emotional. I take this as a sign of maturation that my parents saw in me.
Because the house was directly in the community, I ventured outside of its walls in hopes of finding friends. While I didn’t really find friends my age, I can say that I became a regular at both the Corner Pub and Bar di Gino, to the point where they know my order when I walk in. Alessandro and Davide at the Corner Pub and the entire staff at Bar di Gino have assisted me in my Italian and have answered my plethora of questions about Venetian life. From them, I learned that you can identify a Venetian by the speed at which they walk, you are only supposed to drink cappuccino before eleven (they don’t laugh when I ask for one at 3 in the afternoon though), and two hour lunch breaks are essential to Italian living. From sitting in these places, I watched tourists and Venetians alike. I find myself now mimicking the Venetians. I used to be afraid to drink coffee at the counters, always sitting down or taking it to go. Now I stand at the bar with my cappuccino to converse with the staff and some of the people that stand around.
But did I do what I preached in my past two journal entries? Could I have done more? I firmly believe that I have responded completely to the demands of the house. I also believe that I have moderately responded to the culture of Venice. I absolutely could have done more on this second task. I travelled practically every weekend, so I did not get the full sense of what it is to be Venetian. I could have stayed an extra weekend to develop friendships or observe the weekend culture. I could have read the newspaper more than one time. I am truly upset with myself at this fact. I have said in past journals that I think it is imperative for a citizen to be informed about the political, economic, and social events of the place he or she lives. I now consider myself a type of citizen of Venice, albeit not official, and I have failed to become the good citizen. I read the news at home and can talk with knowledge about many issues plaguing America. Yet, I have no idea how Renzzi’s new policies have been implemented or have affected Italy. I am informed about Venetian culture, but not Italian culture. I have contributed to the regionalism that defines Italy as a country. When I go back to America, I plan on adding an Italian newspaper to my list of daily news sources. Even though I won’t be here anymore, I have a permanent attachment to this country, so I am going to make it my duty to be informed about its progress. I will also attempt to be more open at Wake Forest. I want to spend my remaining three semesters meeting as many people as I can. My best friends will always be there to help me grow, but new people will teach me things that a constant presence cannot. In order to respond to the world and just Wake Forest, I need to be exposed to different people and viewpoints. If I am always with the same people, I will get stuck in the same environment, which is how I think I felt before I came abroad.
I opened my first journal with a story, so I felt that it was fitting to open the last with one as well. While the first was entirely fictionalized, the second represented a summary of how I thought my life went. Obviously my story is more complex than just a long paragraph. Yet, if I am being truthful, before Wake Forest and Casa Artom, my story pretty much followed a straight line. I blame that on the fact that I am the oldest child, the one who likes to follow the rules, set a good example, do everything (including life) perfect. Over the years, I have come to realize that there is no way to live life perfectly. Naturally I still try to find the absolute best way to represent myself, and my perfectionist self, which will never go away, feels the need to say that there is a way to do soccer and schoolwork perfectly. These caveats are why I chose to end my story with “extend the journey” rather than “end” or “complete” the journey. It is a big step for me to realize that things will go wrong. Yes, it took being lost and confused in foreign countries for me to go with the flow of life. I am not done learning and growing. The world is always changing, and, if I want to follow the model I set out for others, I have to respond to the way it evolves.
So living here is just another step towards the person I am meant to become. However, I feel as though this concept, finding the person we are supposed to be, is entirely fictional. It reminds me of Plato’s concept of “the good.” We can approach our true selves just as we can approach “the good,” but only a few people will get to see the actual answer. We think we get close to discovering who we are, but then we experience a life changing event or our environment turns on its head. Maybe we find out who we really are when we get to heaven. Maybe it’s in our last moments of life when we can use hindsight that we are able to define ourselves in a few words. Maybe it’s just the biggest mystery this world possesses. Whatever the answer is, I am in no rush to find out. I will just keep turning the pages of my book, reading voraciously, hoping it’s a book that never ends because it’s far too interesting to put down.
So living here is just another step towards the person I am meant to become. However, I feel as though this concept, finding the person we are supposed to be, is entirely fictional. It reminds me of Plato’s concept of “the good.” We can approach our true selves just as we can approach “the good,” but only a few people will get to see the actual answer. We think we get close to discovering who we are, but then we experience a life changing event or our environment turns on its head. Maybe we find out who we really are when we get to heaven. Maybe it’s in our last moments of life when we can use hindsight that we are able to define ourselves in a few words. Maybe it’s just the biggest mystery this world possesses. Whatever the answer is, I am in no rush to find out. I will just keep turning the pages of my book, reading voraciously, hoping it’s a book that never ends because it’s far too interesting to put down.