What Studying Abroad Actually Taught Me: An Engineer's Exchange Semester in Turin, Italy #hogsabroad

Six and a half months ago, I began a trip that would help shape who I am as a person and would lead to too many awesome experiences and memories to recount in a short blog post. I stood in O'Hare, not knowing exactly what awaited me when I landed in Europe, not knowing what kinds of different people, cultures, language barriers, and food I would encounter, but I knew my life would never really be the same.

My European experience began with trip with a couple of good friends to Russia for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. I had to learn how to communicate enough with people who didn't speak a word of English in order to get where I wanted to go. At the Olympics, I got to participate in cultural exchange and watch cultural exchanges between Americans and people from other countries.  I also had the honor of rooting on American athletes in person, and I have never felt more patriotic in my life! Being at the Olympics was incredible.

Adam with the Olympic Torch, Sochi Winter Olympics 2014

After Russia, I flew to Italy to study automotive engineering at the Politecnico di Torino. I took four classes, one of which was an Italian language class. All of my classes were taught in English, but the professors only seemed to have a proficient grasp on the language. I understand that I didn't go to Italy to speak in English the entire time and they certainly spoke English better than I spoke Italian, but for English classes, it would have been helpful if the professors were more fluent. 

Even so, I learned a significant amount about automotive engineering. I now have a much better general understanding of how cars work, how specific systems work, and how everything fits together, and I would definitely recommend this program to anyone who is interested. If I don't end up working in the automotive industry, I might not specifically use the information I learned, but I am still grateful that I learned it because that information will become useful when I try to fix something in my vehicle in the future. I think it would be good if every mechanical engineer had a basic grasp of automobiles since that is such a large part of our field, and studying abroad definitely taught me the basics. I definitely furthered my professional goals because I would like to work abroad for a couple of years, and already having experience living in a different country for an extended period of time will help me in that. I think the classes themselves were a little harder than the classes in the U.S., but that obviously depends on what classes a student takes in either country. In most classes, grades are based solely on a single exam score at the end of the term, and that made studying more interesting. I passed all of my tests (and therefore all of my classes) the first time I took them, but I had to buckle down and study hard for the last two or three weeks before exams in order to do that.

What happened outside of class definitely taught me more than what I learned in class. I learned a great deal about myself and how I handle stressful situations, especially while traveling. I have some interesting stories, but definitely had more good experiences than bad. Taking day trips to the cities around Torino are some of my favorite memories. I went to an orange festival in Ivrea, hiked in the Alps, swam in the Mediterranean, and swam in a freezing cold river in Donnas.  On my longer trips, I went to the Carnival in Venice, hiked the five cities of Cinque Terre, and found a Hog sticker on a street sign in Rome. I visited friends living in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and Istanbul, Turkey during Easter Break, took a trip to Prague and Berlin, and stopped in Iceland for five days on my way back to the States. During my study abroad, I visited seven countries, stepped foot on three continents, experienced a varied range of cultures, and learned lessons on what to do and not to do while traveling.  

Adam visiting the Colosseum in Rome

Adam visiting Iceland

By far the best part of my study abroad experience was becoming friends with the Italians in our dorm. All the rooms were single occupancy, but there were kitchens on every floor where most of the residents would gather to cook two or three meals a day. We spent a great deal of time hanging out in the kitchens cooking with the Italians and getting to know them. They would let us try their meals, and we would offer samples of ours. They were often confused at what we were cooking because they had never seen or tasted banana bread, biscuits, gravy, peach cobbler, or cinnamon toast before. But they liked pretty much everything we had them try. We would also frequently go to a park close to the dorm and play basketball. I have to brag that every time we played a pickup game of Americans vs. Italians, we always won. I made several good Italian friends, and saying goodbye to them at the end of the trip was very hard because there's a decent chance that I won't see some of them again. One of my favorite days of the whole trip was when we celebrated Independence Day in July. The Arkansas guys cooked for two days to prepare hamburgers, hamburger buns, fruit salad, peach cobbler, baked vegetables, and other food for close to forty people. It was a lot of work, but we had a great meal and it was a good farewell gift because we were all leaving in the few weeks following that day. Traveling to so many different countries and around Italy was great, school was interesting, but the best part of the whole trip was learning about Italian culture from and becoming friends with the Italians living in our dorm.

Studying abroad has helped shape my mindset and view of other cultures and countries. So many times as isolated Americans, we view our country as “us” and the rest of the world as “them” and don't consider that things going on in the States affect the rest of the world. Even if we do travel, we go somewhere focused on the sights, the food, and what the trip will do for us, not considering that people have lives in the places we visit, and that we have an awesome opportunity to learn their culture. We forget that the place doesn't exist for our pleasure, but exists to provide a livelihood for the people who call that area their home. We often don't consider that small things like being unnecessarily loud in public, complaining about something trivial to anyone helping us (waiter/waitress, hotel/hostel reception, etc.), or being inconsiderate of the culture around us leads to negative attitudes towards Americans in general and poorly represents our great country. Just small changes in these kinds of mindsets can help all travelers greater appreciate whatever country we find ourselves in, and will help us represent the U.S.A. in a better way and keep a global mindset, even when we get back to the States.