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March 2023 - There’s more to it, as always.
Many friends and colleagues have shared with me a post that has recently gone viral, recounting the experience of a student unhappy with her study abroad in Florence.
We know that virality goes well with superficiality yet, as someone who lives in Florence, works in internationalization and study aboard, and navigates three cultures regularly (US, Italian and Serbian) it feels difficult to escape the call to add a personal comment. The author of the initial post, a college student in the US, describes how her semester in Florence did not live up to her romanticized expectations. Prior to her arrival, she had envisioned “potluck dinners with her roommates, summer flings with people who called [her] bella, gelato that dripped down [her] fingers in the heat, and natural wine that paired effortlessly with good conversation and better prosciutto.” Yet, when faced with a less glamorous reality she ended up "hating" her time abroad. Worth adding here that many Italian “journalists” shared and translated bits of this post on Italian media under the wrongful assumption that the experience of the student lasted 6 months instead of the typical average of 14 weeks (they must have assumed that a “semester” translates into 6 months).
The original post gained widespread attention after some Twitter users shared screenshots of it accompanied by harshly critical comments. While the post's tone is indeed condescending and disdainful, it touches on crucial clichés worth exploring. In parallel, perhaps as a follow-up to this initial “accusation,” Florentine newspapers have published, shortly after, new stories of a trite narrative: the students’ love of binge drinking while studying abroad. The Corriere Fiorentino has just released yet another article on how students come to Florence mainly to get drunk freely taking advantage of a lower drinking age here as opposed to the United States (and quotes students stating they do not like nor try mingling with locals). Yet, the same journal takes the time to applaud study abroad alumni who donate significant sums to programs locally, decades after their unforgettable experience in Florence.
Students who study abroad in Europe often have increasingly higher expectations which include completing their coursework, achieving good grades, traveling to as many cities and countries as possible (and not just in Europe), partying, networking, hosting family and friends who visit, keeping up with life back home, and interviewing for jobs or internships to be ready upon their return. Possibly learn the local language if not English. All of this is expected to happen smoothly, elegantly, with lots of fun, through polished Instagrammable moments, and without (cultural) incidents or misunderstandings. Parents add pressure by expecting to control the experience from afar and trying to fight any mismatch between expectations (driven by US cultural norms) and the reality of a different country. And indeed, the pressure and financial investments are high. The author of the initial post describes how most of her classmates would take cheap flights to places like Croatia and Munich for Oktoberfest. To her, this seemed like an exhausting form of escapism. “Since most of my classmates were looking to go to sex shows in Amsterdam and getting wasted in Ibiza, I traveled alone. I went to Nice, France; Lugano, Switzerland; London; Malta; and Dubai, United Arab Emirates.” To her, this is a contained list.
The macro theme that stands out to me in this post is the paradox between the vulnerability that is needed to expose oneself to learning and the need to consume and control everything: time, destiny, future, and others. It is the "time is money," attitude that demands that every single moment should pay off the initial investment vs the ability to value the time and unpredictability it needs to learn, understand, build relationships, and feel comfortable in unfamiliar scenarios. The mindset of “must do it all” puts overwhelming pressure on students and parents, making them feel like they must achieve a very demanding set of goals in a short span of time. A time during which they are vulnerable and exposed to cultural differences they typically cannot read well and fight against. And yes, it is our responsibility as educators to guide them and help them yet, the bar has risen for us as well and we are continuing to operate as if these collateral expectations are not there. There was a time when we used to talk about culture shock for the students upon arrival, but nowadays it almost feels like culture shock is often experienced by local staff and faculty who are appalled in front of increasingly challenging demands. A personal anecdote comes to mind related to this paradoxical tension. When I first started living in Boston, a friend of mine and I were trying to arrange to meet. After we agreed on a time and place, she commented: "great, we'll have quality time together." I was puzzled by her statement and could not quite grasp what she meant. To me, that statement was signaling a need to categorize time in a claustrophobic and somewhat bipolar way. Quality time vs non-quality time. She seemed to assume that the distinction between the two was clear, and one dimension could live without the other as if quality could happen in an aseptic bubble protected by the viruses of non-quality experiences. It seems that the student of the original post expected exclusively quality time.
As we continue to encourage learning through exposure to different cultures, we must recognize that these experiences can be challenging not simply because of the cultural differences but also because of the additional pressures that keep being added to the “time abroad” packet which is getting bigger and bigger. It is our responsibility to encourage the students to dive into the frustration that learning sometimes requires. The reflection on expectations and the analysis of what checklists students have prepared for themselves should happen prior to embarking on the flight that leads to the selected study abroad destination. The post of the student does not seem to me, a reflection on a study abroad experience but rather an outburst of frustration from someone who has not succeeded in ticking off all the boxes on her pre-departure list. Now my question is, shouldn’t we work on rethinking the checklist?