A's, B's, C's, and hopefully no D's or F's.
You know…Italy isn’t all fun and games. I do have classes that I am required to attend on a regular basis. Lets be honest, I came over here for the multicultural education. I’ve spoken a lot about the extracurricular activities, but I have yet to speak about the academic component.
The school that I attend in Florence is called Academia Italiana. It’s the number one fashion school in Italy. So, you can understand why I chose this one. I’d say approximately 85% of the students here are studying some form of art. People draw a lot. This is quite the opposite at Bryant University, where approximately 100% of the students are business majors. I miss Microsoft Excel. In orientation they warned us about culture shock, I just didn’t think it would come in this form.
My teachers at the Accademia are quite the characters:
Photographing Florence – I don’t know her name. She told us it the first day of class, but it was long and confusing. I don’t feel bad about it because there are only 12 students in this class and she still doesn’t know any of our names. She’s younger, probably late 20’s and she owns three cell phones. At least one of them goes off during class. So she’ll pick up the phone and start a conversation. Most Italians are always late and she is no exception. Our class starts at 9 AM, but a few of us got there early one day and she actually told us to get there 10-15 minutes late from now on. She has yet to show us any of her photographs…until then, I’ll be skeptical about listening to her advice.
Italian – Ok, I have this class four days in a row for two and a half hours each day and it’s pretty brutal. The teacher is Simonetta. She’s in her late forty’s, rides her bicycle to school, and wears a cape. No really, she looks like one of the witches from the movie Hokus Pokus. She has raggedy dirty blonde hair, a big mole on her chin and she wear’s this overcoat thing that looks like a cape. Not to mention, she likes to eat snakes in the afternoon. She doesn’t tell us when the exams are..she asks us when we want to have them.
Italian Style – This is one of my favorite classes. We learn all about the Italian culture…food, family, media, the mafia, etc. The teacher is Paola. She is extremely funny. She’s biased towards me because I am Italian and my family is from Naples, where she is from. We get a lot of breaks during class because she smokes a lot.
History of Tuscany – Extremely boring, but Paola teaches this class, too. She keeps it interesting. Her English is far from perfect and she knows it. She makes fun of English words that she cannot pronounce. She’ll slur a bunch of sounds together to do an impression of the word and it really cracks us up. The other day we were laughing and she says, “Why are you smiling at me?” She meant to say laughing, but instead she said smiling. She’s the nicest teacher I have and by far the funniest.
Italian Cinema – We watch a lot of movies. All of them are in Italian, but there are English subtitles. The teacher is Franco. He’s in his late forty’s and has slicked back hair. He’s probably my favorite teacher here. There is one thing that separates a good teacher from an exceptional teacher. Enthusiasm. He has enough for about five teachers combined. He gets really into it. We’ll be watching a movie and he’ll act along with some scenes in the film. He has a very funny personality and does entertaining impressions on some of the characters.
So that’s my weekly grind. I can't complain. Anyways, it looks like this weekend I’m going on a school trip to Ferrar and Mantova.
The school that I attend in Florence is called Academia Italiana. It’s the number one fashion school in Italy. So, you can understand why I chose this one. I’d say approximately 85% of the students here are studying some form of art. People draw a lot. This is quite the opposite at Bryant University, where approximately 100% of the students are business majors. I miss Microsoft Excel. In orientation they warned us about culture shock, I just didn’t think it would come in this form.
My teachers at the Accademia are quite the characters:
Photographing Florence – I don’t know her name. She told us it the first day of class, but it was long and confusing. I don’t feel bad about it because there are only 12 students in this class and she still doesn’t know any of our names. She’s younger, probably late 20’s and she owns three cell phones. At least one of them goes off during class. So she’ll pick up the phone and start a conversation. Most Italians are always late and she is no exception. Our class starts at 9 AM, but a few of us got there early one day and she actually told us to get there 10-15 minutes late from now on. She has yet to show us any of her photographs…until then, I’ll be skeptical about listening to her advice.
Italian – Ok, I have this class four days in a row for two and a half hours each day and it’s pretty brutal. The teacher is Simonetta. She’s in her late forty’s, rides her bicycle to school, and wears a cape. No really, she looks like one of the witches from the movie Hokus Pokus. She has raggedy dirty blonde hair, a big mole on her chin and she wear’s this overcoat thing that looks like a cape. Not to mention, she likes to eat snakes in the afternoon. She doesn’t tell us when the exams are..she asks us when we want to have them.
Italian Style – This is one of my favorite classes. We learn all about the Italian culture…food, family, media, the mafia, etc. The teacher is Paola. She is extremely funny. She’s biased towards me because I am Italian and my family is from Naples, where she is from. We get a lot of breaks during class because she smokes a lot.
History of Tuscany – Extremely boring, but Paola teaches this class, too. She keeps it interesting. Her English is far from perfect and she knows it. She makes fun of English words that she cannot pronounce. She’ll slur a bunch of sounds together to do an impression of the word and it really cracks us up. The other day we were laughing and she says, “Why are you smiling at me?” She meant to say laughing, but instead she said smiling. She’s the nicest teacher I have and by far the funniest.
Italian Cinema – We watch a lot of movies. All of them are in Italian, but there are English subtitles. The teacher is Franco. He’s in his late forty’s and has slicked back hair. He’s probably my favorite teacher here. There is one thing that separates a good teacher from an exceptional teacher. Enthusiasm. He has enough for about five teachers combined. He gets really into it. We’ll be watching a movie and he’ll act along with some scenes in the film. He has a very funny personality and does entertaining impressions on some of the characters.
So that’s my weekly grind. I can't complain. Anyways, it looks like this weekend I’m going on a school trip to Ferrar and Mantova.
posted by Contest Hawk at 5:37 PM
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