Waiting for the summer to come...a reflection on the Skype exchange

photo by marirs

I would never think I would enjoy this experience so much. At the beginning I must confess that I was really nervous: my American peer and I didn’t know each other, so it was not always easy to keep the conversation going and avoid embarrassing silences! However, when I started skyping in larger groups, the conversation was livelier and more stimulating and there was a very friendly atmosphere that made me feel comfortable and at my ease. I felt free to talk about anything with my American peers. To be honest, both of us were more interested in talking about our hobbies and everyday life than about the death penalty and the problem of immigration, but even when we did so most of the times they seemed eager to cooperate and to say their opinion. One thing that surprised me was the easiness with which they expressed their political preference: in Italy this is often a “taboo” we prefer to avoid while talking with someone we don’t know, while for them it was not a problem to say that they agreed or disagreed with one candidate or the other. I also noticed that all of them knew Berlusconi, but they had no idea of who Romano Prodi is! It sounded weird to me, given that in Italy mass media usually transmit a lot of information about American politics. Evidently, in the US there is a different system of information and a different degree of knowledge about what is going on in the rest of the world.

As I already thought, I had the confirmation that life in a university campus is completely different from the kind of experiences we associate to university in Italy. First of all, for the American students it was absolutely normal to spend months far away from home to study and in this way they learn faster what being autonomous and independent means. Secondly, American universities seem to be very stimulating places to live in: they are attended by people not only from all over the United States, but from all over the world as well! In this way, I think it’s easier to broaden your horizons and to grow up without prejudices.

The exchange was also very useful from a linguistic point of view: we chose quite a difficult topic to develop, the death penalty, which compelled us to enlarge our vocabulary and to learn expressions and constructions we didn’t know before, such as to deter, death row inmate, to sentence and so on. Of course I had the chance to improve my listening and speaking skills as well and to learn to maintain my concentration focused on what was said since I was supposed to give a constant feedback to my interlocutor.
To summarize I hope to keep in touch with the American students and maybe to meet some of them when they come to Bologna next September!