Submitted by Paige Pavleszek on the 2017 winter session program in Italy sponsored by the Department of Linguistics and Cognitive Science and the Department of English…
For my senior year winter semester, I studied abroad in Italy. Before my program, I took various methods of communication for granted. Before, I was able to contact anyone anywhere at any time knowing they would understand me. After coming to Italy, my understanding and means of communication and language changed.
Communicating with both locals and my peers was more difficult than expected. Being an American, I assumed every country around the world understood and spoke English. This was not the case and the language barrier was challenging to overcome. Additionally, communicating with my peers involved a lot of trust and patience. Without our cellphones, interacting and making plans were much more troublesome than back home. This program required us to utilize very basic forms of communication and as digital natives this made us extremely uncomfortable.
While experiencing these difficulties, I was studying Linguistics 101. It turns out, this course was more useful than I thought. I learned that a simple sentence could be completely misunderstood if not adequately written or said. This course helped me improve my communication skills by allowing me to understand the basics of language. Through this understanding, I gained a new perspective of interpreting and appreciating the fundamentals of language.
My program has allowed me to realize how fortunate I am to have my methods of communication and how naïve I am in relation to other cultures around the word. Italy has allowed me to experience culture shock and to truly feel uncomfortable. Through this experience, I believe I have become worldlier and a better-rounded citizen. Finally, I can now add to my resume that I successfully navigated a foreign country while adapting and embracing cultural and lingual differences.