My Study Abroad Experience
At every university studying abroad seems to be one of the things most students talk about wanting to do. I decided to study abroad in Rome, Italy, the summer after my sophomore year at the University of South Carolina. I chose Italy because my grandparents on my mother’s side of my family immigrated to America from Italy. I’m going to tell you a little bit about my experience visiting the motherland!
The process of applying and getting accepted for the summer program I did was super long because of how competitive it was. The program I signed up for was solely available for students in the Journalism and Mass Communications School at UofSC and only 25 students were accepted. Once I was accepted to this 3-week summer program, I was overwhelmed with emotions. The excitement kicked in at first, but very quickly after that I was consumed with stress and anxiety. The trip costed much more than I could’ve imagined! I applied for scholarships and received over $3,500, but even with all that money I still had to pay over $2000 out of pocket.
The day I left for Rome was interesting, to say the least. In order to pay the smallest amount of money as possible, I decided to get 2 separate flights. There were a few people on my flight that were in my study abroad class, which was comforting after we landed. There were shuttles outside of the airport that took us straight to the apartment we were staying in. When we got to the apartment, we were shocked to see that the apartment was not in the center of the city like we all expected it to be, but it turned out to be wonderful (mostly because it was right next to a grocery store).
My class was at 10 in the morning Monday through Friday, which sucked. In order to get to our classroom, we had to take the tram and walk about 10 minutes after we got off at the stop. The class was usually not very long, and our professors were usually very unorganized. The assignments seemed simple on paper, but I found them much harder to do because we had a limited amount of time to do them.
All-day every day we walked around Rome doing different touristy things. Seeing as much as possible was incredible, but also very tiring and painful. My feet were in massive pain and I was running off less than 5 hours of sleep a night. I think that this caused me to not fully comprehend the fact that I was living my dreams. I took marvelous photos for my photoblog and for Instagram, but somehow a lot of it felt unreal. The experience was overall astonishing, but I wish it was spread out for a longer period of time. At the end of the day, I had a beautiful time in Italy! I only recommend to you that if you’re thinking about studying abroad then find a program that is longer than 2 weeks so that you aren’t worn out and have time to give your all in your class as well as have as much fun traveling abroad as possible. Even with all of the exhaustion, I would relive my time abroad in a heartbeat because of the memories I made in a stunning country.
Inspired? View more photos from my trip to Italy and my other travels on my photoblog here.
Have tips, advice, or personal experience that you think would benefit others? Our audience is all yours! Submit an article to be considered for a post on our blog. We’ll even link to your social media accounts!
Talia is a 2021 graduate of the University of South Carolina where she majored in public relations. She serves as the public relations specialist of Paving Your Path to College. In her free time, she enjoys traveling the world, experiencing different cultures, and photography. Click here to take a look at her beautiful photoblog.
