Clips from Journal Entries Before Leaving Abroad

Hi everyone! My name is Jordan and throughout this semester I will be blogging about my experience at Bocconi University in Milan, Italy! For some background, I am a junior in the International Business program with a second major in Economics and minors in Spanish and Dance. I am typing this in Milan, but gathered my thoughts about leaving for abroad beforehand, so before the fun part, I want to talk about my feelings leading up to landing in Italy from past personal journal entries.

I’m going to be honest and say that it doesn’t feel real that I’m going abroad. I have known that I was going to do this since my senior year in high school, yet it still feels strange that it’s finally happening. All the paperwork and logistics have made it feel real, but it still seems far away in a sense. I feel both prepared and unprepared, excited and terrified, but overall ready to have strong takeaways from my experience.

Something that ultimately made it start to click that I was actually going to be in another country for an extended period of time was buying tickets to the Women’s Figure Skating Short Program at the Olympics. It’s probably my first purchase for Italy that doesn’t have to do with logistics or my personal life. It gives me a sense that I am actually going somewhere and enjoying it.

I have a lot of fun with international students and have loved the programming by the IB Engage team, so I’m excited to see how their perceptions of Europe differ from mine as someone visiting. I also love hearing different perspectives from different people so that is also very exciting to me. I also am excited to have the time to take dance classes while abroad.

One thing that keeps me up at night is the language barrier. I honestly have no gauge of how difficult it will be while only knowing basic Italian. I know enough Spanish to get by, but Italian is really new to me. I hope to improve a lot through immersion, so this will be a strong way to test myself.

I want to come into this experience with few expectations. I want to experience it as fully as I can and leave little regrets. I know there will be some hiccups along the way but regardless I am still very excited. I will go in depth more on some of the things I mentioned in future posts but for now I leave you guys with my view as I was flying into Milan!

Stunning view waking up before I landed in Milan!