Video: My Study Abroad Experience in Padua, Italy
My Study Abroad Experience in Padua, Italy
My Study Abroad Experience in Padua, Italy
By the time Tess Walsh arrived at Boston University, she was champing at the bit to travel to parts of the world she’d only read about. Growing up in Cambridge, Mass., she had done very little traveling prior to college. “That’s why my first question for my academic advisor was, ‘How can I study abroad?’” Walsh says.
Inspired by the beauty of the Italian language, Walsh (Wheelock’24) took an introductory course at BU and discovered she loved it. Soon after, she decided to apply to study abroad in Padua, Italy, where she has been living and studying this semester.
An early education major, Walsh takes one course, Intercultural Education, at the University of Padua, and three classes through BU—one on art history, with a focus on Padua and Venice, another on Italian language, and a third about the food industry in Italy—a great match for someone who describes herself as “obsessed with food.”
Outside the classroom, Walsh has immersed herself in Italian culture by living with a host family and traveling almost every weekend to new destinations, among them Venice, Verona, Milan, Sicily, Genoa, Napoli, Capri, Florence, and Rome. She even hopped a plane for a quick visit to Dublin, Ireland. She says she feels lucky that her study abroad coincided with a return to (mostly) normal in Europe since the pandemic started. “If I had gone a year or two ago, a lot of experiences I’ve been able to have might not have been possible, due to COVID,” she says.
For Walsh, creating this vlog was not only a way to document her semester in Italy; it was also a way to encourage others to study abroad, and like her, have a transformative experience. “Living abroad has affected my perspectives on life and the world in so many ways,” she says. “I feel more knowledgeable, patient, communicative, experienced, and mature.
“My eyes have been more opened, and I feel my ability to look at things in different ways has grown.”
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