Chardaie:  So, it was a good semester. I did a lot, because it's very different from the really stressful Ivy League environment that I had been in for two years already. In Italy, I think also the culture and the fact that everyone is so much more relaxed, and it's all about really enjoying life over there.

So I took courses in Italian politics, Italian language, Italian literature, and basically just took my classes and would wander the streets of Milan. I would just go and stop and talk to random people and try to work on picking up the language and learning more of it.

I had only taken one semester of Italian before going abroad, so I didn't know much Italian. But I knew enough so that it wasn't very difficult for me to understand. It was easy to understand my surroundings. It was difficult for me to speak though.

One thing I liked about Milan was... I visited other cities in Italy. I went to Rome and the Vatican and did all that. And I think one thing that I appreciated about Milan was that it's not the popular city abroad. It's known as the most industrial... Northern Italy is more industrialized than the whole of the country.

So Milan is like the industrial center of the north, and it's known for the fashion industry. But I don't think many students think, "I want to go study abroad in Milan, " unless they're doing music, because there's a lot of theater and opera there. Or if they're doing fashion stuff.

So for the most part, I felt like it was less touristy than most of the other Italian cities that I went to visit, which I appreciated. Because when I was walking down the streets of Milan, the people literally couldn't communicate with me in English. So it forced me to try to learn the language more and pick it up more.

Whereas when I went to Rome for the weekend, I could have gotten by the whole weekend without speaking a word of Italian and it would've been fine. Which wouldn't be ideal for my study abroad experience, because I wanted to immerse myself in the language as well as the culture.

It was a good time. I'm trying to think if there's anything else I could tell you about. I traveled some weekends, but I didn't travel... By my standards, I think I traveled a lot. By the other students' who were in my program, I think I traveled very little. I went to France, and I went to London, and I traveled to some other cities in Italy.

Basically, everyone else in my program, every weekend went to a different place, whether it was Greece or Nice or wherever they were going. They were just all over the place. It was fun. It was fun to be able to travel. It was relatively cheap, because they have cheaper airlines. I think I paid 20 something Euros for my round trip flight to go to Paris when I went. So it's not that expensive.

Chardaie:  From this school, I can handle anything. And for me, I know that nothing's going to be as stressful as Harvard is, so I'm going to have so much fun. It's going to be a relaxed time. I'm going to read for leisure. I'm going to do all of these things that I enjoy doing but you somehow don't have the time during the school year.


I wasn't really worried about academics there because I was like, "Well, if you can do Ivy League academics, you'll be fine anywhere else." So, I was just really looking for a time away from the intense regiments of Harvard. Focusing on arts.

The other thing was, I felt like upon going to college - before college, I was all about being creative and writing and poetry and reading. And then, I got to college and I thought it would be this time that that's all I would do?where I could be as creative as I wanted to be. Then, I got there and I was like, "I don't ever have time to be creative."


It's like, "I need to somehow do all this reading and write this paper," so I became bogged down with academics that I lost my passion for learning and creativity. And I was like, "OK, I need a break from this place, so I can fall back in love with reading, fall back in love with theories."


There was a time when I was I was like, "Oh, I can just read this because I think this is fascinating." Then in became, "I'm reading this because I have to write a paper about it." So, I was trying to rekindle a passion for learning and creativity that I had lost somewhere down the line.

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