Staging the City: Performance, Power, and Identity in Rome
My first time going abroad in college was one of the most amazing experiences of my entire life. No one specific thing made the experience so astounding - it seemed to be a blend of modern European culture, centuries of history, and incredible peers. Please find below my application for the for using this trip as an experiential learning activity, as well as my final reflection on the experience.
Experiential Learning Application
Summarize your proposed experiential learning activity, including the primary focus of your activity, your intended actions, and the expectations of your supervisor and/or organization/partners. This program, based in Rome and occurring over the early fall start term of 2017, is basically a cultural and historical exploration of Rome. We will tour around the many varied historical archives of the city, and attempt to discover how Rome created its historical and modern image. Over the course of several weeks deeply immersed in roman culture, we will see many different remnants of the eras of Roman past and stitch together the "Roman" identity that is a pinnacle of modern western culture. Through participation in class with Professor Odai Johnson, coupled with our own excursions, the goal is to discover what makes Rome--"Rome".
Explain how your activity demonstrates the values of the Honors Program Experiential Learning area you selected. Rather than reiterating our definition, outline how your activity embodies this definition. Traveling and studying abroad in Rome will allow me to expand my worldview through experiencing a new culture. Beyond the challenges and opportunity that comes with traveling to a new country for the first time, I will be taking part in a "humanitarian" program, something that I have not experienced before in my college academics, or even thought I would go out of my way to experience. The program stretches several weeks, and I hope to be able to go far beyond the city limits of Rome, and travel to Florence, Venice, or maybe even another country in the hopes that I will be able to take in as much as I can in my relatively short time I get to spend abroad.
How and why did you select this engagement? What skills or experiences do you hope to gain from it? I decided to apply to this program because it seemed exactly the opposite of what I want to do with my life. I've always believed that STEM is the right field for me, and that hasn't changed--but this opportunity seemed so far out of what I have studied so far at UW or plan to study that I thought it was an opportunity too good to pass up on. Beyond being excited about traveling abroad to Rome (something I've always wanted to do), I wanted the chance to learn from a Professor in the Drama Department (the complete opposite of STEM, I think). Experiencing a new culture and place sounded amazing to me, and adding on top an entirely new worldview is exactly the opportunity I'm looking for at this time in my life.
How does this activity connect to your concurrent or past coursework? How does it speak to your broader education goals and experiences? This activity doesn't connect to anything that I've ever done before. I have taken mostly STEM classes on my path to a Chemistry degree, and I plan to jump at any chance to fit in something different into the rigorous course load. While I do plan to focus on Chemistry during my undergraduate years, one of the main reasons I decided to apply and join the Honors program was the expansive opportunities it offers.
I figured that in my path to a career in renewable energies, I should jump at any opportunity to experience different cultures in the flesh, and see how the challenges of unsustainable energy usage effects different people around the world.
How will your activity contribute to the larger goals of the organization/your partners? The University of Washington's mission is: "The University of Washington educates a diverse student body to become responsible global citizens and future leaders through a challenging learning environment informed by cutting-edge scholarship." By participating in this program, I will gain foreign cultural experience and challenge my "stem-oriented" mind with the coursework of a humanitarian class. Through the challenges that will arise in this program, I hope to further learn what it means to be a responsible global citizen.
Explain how your activity demonstrates the values of the Honors Program Experiential Learning area you selected. Rather than reiterating our definition, outline how your activity embodies this definition. Traveling and studying abroad in Rome will allow me to expand my worldview through experiencing a new culture. Beyond the challenges and opportunity that comes with traveling to a new country for the first time, I will be taking part in a "humanitarian" program, something that I have not experienced before in my college academics, or even thought I would go out of my way to experience. The program stretches several weeks, and I hope to be able to go far beyond the city limits of Rome, and travel to Florence, Venice, or maybe even another country in the hopes that I will be able to take in as much as I can in my relatively short time I get to spend abroad.
How and why did you select this engagement? What skills or experiences do you hope to gain from it? I decided to apply to this program because it seemed exactly the opposite of what I want to do with my life. I've always believed that STEM is the right field for me, and that hasn't changed--but this opportunity seemed so far out of what I have studied so far at UW or plan to study that I thought it was an opportunity too good to pass up on. Beyond being excited about traveling abroad to Rome (something I've always wanted to do), I wanted the chance to learn from a Professor in the Drama Department (the complete opposite of STEM, I think). Experiencing a new culture and place sounded amazing to me, and adding on top an entirely new worldview is exactly the opportunity I'm looking for at this time in my life.
How does this activity connect to your concurrent or past coursework? How does it speak to your broader education goals and experiences? This activity doesn't connect to anything that I've ever done before. I have taken mostly STEM classes on my path to a Chemistry degree, and I plan to jump at any chance to fit in something different into the rigorous course load. While I do plan to focus on Chemistry during my undergraduate years, one of the main reasons I decided to apply and join the Honors program was the expansive opportunities it offers.
I figured that in my path to a career in renewable energies, I should jump at any opportunity to experience different cultures in the flesh, and see how the challenges of unsustainable energy usage effects different people around the world.
How will your activity contribute to the larger goals of the organization/your partners? The University of Washington's mission is: "The University of Washington educates a diverse student body to become responsible global citizens and future leaders through a challenging learning environment informed by cutting-edge scholarship." By participating in this program, I will gain foreign cultural experience and challenge my "stem-oriented" mind with the coursework of a humanitarian class. Through the challenges that will arise in this program, I hope to further learn what it means to be a responsible global citizen.
Reflection
It's hard to put experiences like these into words. First of all, I feel lucky. Lucky enough to have the chance travel. Lucky that the people that also flew into a foreign country with no idea who would they would be living with were amazing. Lucky to have a great professor. Lucky to be alive.
When I first arrived in Rome-it really took me a while for the "wow, I'm in Europe" feeling to hit. It took a week really, when on the first Friday, after we had strolled through the ancient ruins of Ostia, I was standing on the beach gazing out on the Mediterranean ocean. Walking up to the edge of the water, something was different from the waters of puget sound I had grown so accustomed to-it was so incredibly blue, iridescent as the sun struck the water. All of a sudden everything I had seen, heard, and felt that first week came flooding over me. I had stood within the Colosseum, I had tasted real Italian pizza, I had spent a whole week gazing at the remnants of ages past and walked amongst a city I had dreamt about. But for some reason it didn't hit me until the end of that first week.
Looking back to the days leading up to my flight out of Seattle, I would say my past self's expectations were pretty spot on-I really had no idea what I was getting into. Yes, I was going to be studying in Rome for a month. Yes, it was taught by a drama Professor. All this I expected. But I really had no idea that the experience, reflecting on its entirety and down to the minutes spent walking to the UW Rome Center from our apartment-would be so staggeringly breathtaking. It really is an entirely different experience then living in a modern, urbanized city like Seattle.
If I had to describe Rome in a sentence, it would be: "Rome is a city whose streets are littered with broken bottles, cigarette butts, and remnants of ancient times that a textbook cannot possibly capture within its pages." How our professor designed the class, on the days leading up to a tour of a certain area in Rome, we would read about the time period in a textbook that was required for the class. The textbook, although I admit was not as dry as some of the other history class material I've encountered, was nothing more than a textbook. What made the information incredibly valuable, was walking the same path of the people we read within the book. That, to me, gave it value beyond pure factual knowledge. Crossing the Ponte Sisto (a bridge we walked across every day to reach the Rome Center) just as the Spanish did during the sack of Rome-it was mind boggling. Our professor did mention, and it seemed ridiculous to me, that he had previously taught this class as a seminar at the Seattle Campus. Without seeing it in the flesh, I truly believe that the information to be gained through reading the textbook alone would only be a minute fraction of the value of my own experience.
Realizing this in the few days since my program ended, is an incredibly valuable lesson that I need to keep in mind for all my future academic courses. Information is the most valuable for me when I can stand within it, feel it, mold it, and experiment with it in my own way. While I don't think I'll be able to escape textbooks anytime soon, or ever for that matter, I now register the value in what can be learned from page to page, but I now can firmly say I will always prioritize on what can be learned through, as Professor Johnson would say, "being in the moment." I know now that any chance I have to further my academic experience, whether it be in Chemistry or another honors class outside of my focus, that it will be more interesting, gripping, and infinitely more rewarding to take any opportunity I can to materialize and learn what I can from expanding out of the purely theoretical(textbook) into something I can see, feel, and hear, or better yet-all three.
One of the many jokes my parents forced on me as a twisted sort of wisdom before traveling abroad was warning me that "I had better come home." Shrugging it off at the time as nothing more than another parental platitude, I can now profoundly say that I understand why they felt the need to warn me. This was my first experience traveling in Europe without my family, and even abroad, as a fully independent adult-and it truly is addicting. I can clearly see how some people actually find themselves staying longer than planned, or even indefinitely, when getting that first initial taste of different culture. For me, although I decided to appease my parents, my time in Rome is definitely only the first time that I will go abroad during my time in college. Just as I said before the program, I will always jump on every opportunity that my come my way to go abroad. Now, after spending a month on my own, I am more confident in my ability to navigate foreign countries and unfamiliar cultures. In the short time since I stepped off the plane in Seattle, I've fantasized about field programs in Patagonia, semester long exchanges to the Netherlands, and really about seeing every other corner of the world. But I'm still not even done with Italy, as I definitely plan to go back there someday.
One more thing I believe worth mentioning is something I found out about myself, on a trip outside the city of Rome, to the Amalfi Coast. While I can appreciate the beauty of thousands of years of history, in my eyes it is insignificant in comparison with natural beauty. Don't get me wrong, the Colosseum was incredible, Saint Peter's Basilica out of this world, and Bernini's sculpted works astounding-gazing upon the Amalfi Coast as we ferried from Capri blocked all else from my mind. The jagged cliffs, the layers of rock jutting at oblique angles from the water, and the unbelievably bright blue waves I will never be able to forget. The natural splendor of where the Italian coast met the Mediterranean was something out of a dream, and that experience has only furthered my resolve to pursue renewable energies, and do what I can to preserve the natural beauty of the world.
To sum it all up, I learned an incredible amount, more than I thought possible in a month. I could tell you about baroque churches, palazzi, how marble first started being used in classical roman antiquity, and all about how Rome has a knack for borrowing power symbols from ancient roman culture. But what I think I really discovered during my time abroad, something that wasn't part of the syllabus and what I found during my research project, was how I realized that there is still so much in this world I need and want to see, learn, and do-and now is a better time than ever to push myself to places and heights I've never been.
When I first arrived in Rome-it really took me a while for the "wow, I'm in Europe" feeling to hit. It took a week really, when on the first Friday, after we had strolled through the ancient ruins of Ostia, I was standing on the beach gazing out on the Mediterranean ocean. Walking up to the edge of the water, something was different from the waters of puget sound I had grown so accustomed to-it was so incredibly blue, iridescent as the sun struck the water. All of a sudden everything I had seen, heard, and felt that first week came flooding over me. I had stood within the Colosseum, I had tasted real Italian pizza, I had spent a whole week gazing at the remnants of ages past and walked amongst a city I had dreamt about. But for some reason it didn't hit me until the end of that first week.
Looking back to the days leading up to my flight out of Seattle, I would say my past self's expectations were pretty spot on-I really had no idea what I was getting into. Yes, I was going to be studying in Rome for a month. Yes, it was taught by a drama Professor. All this I expected. But I really had no idea that the experience, reflecting on its entirety and down to the minutes spent walking to the UW Rome Center from our apartment-would be so staggeringly breathtaking. It really is an entirely different experience then living in a modern, urbanized city like Seattle.
If I had to describe Rome in a sentence, it would be: "Rome is a city whose streets are littered with broken bottles, cigarette butts, and remnants of ancient times that a textbook cannot possibly capture within its pages." How our professor designed the class, on the days leading up to a tour of a certain area in Rome, we would read about the time period in a textbook that was required for the class. The textbook, although I admit was not as dry as some of the other history class material I've encountered, was nothing more than a textbook. What made the information incredibly valuable, was walking the same path of the people we read within the book. That, to me, gave it value beyond pure factual knowledge. Crossing the Ponte Sisto (a bridge we walked across every day to reach the Rome Center) just as the Spanish did during the sack of Rome-it was mind boggling. Our professor did mention, and it seemed ridiculous to me, that he had previously taught this class as a seminar at the Seattle Campus. Without seeing it in the flesh, I truly believe that the information to be gained through reading the textbook alone would only be a minute fraction of the value of my own experience.
Realizing this in the few days since my program ended, is an incredibly valuable lesson that I need to keep in mind for all my future academic courses. Information is the most valuable for me when I can stand within it, feel it, mold it, and experiment with it in my own way. While I don't think I'll be able to escape textbooks anytime soon, or ever for that matter, I now register the value in what can be learned from page to page, but I now can firmly say I will always prioritize on what can be learned through, as Professor Johnson would say, "being in the moment." I know now that any chance I have to further my academic experience, whether it be in Chemistry or another honors class outside of my focus, that it will be more interesting, gripping, and infinitely more rewarding to take any opportunity I can to materialize and learn what I can from expanding out of the purely theoretical(textbook) into something I can see, feel, and hear, or better yet-all three.
One of the many jokes my parents forced on me as a twisted sort of wisdom before traveling abroad was warning me that "I had better come home." Shrugging it off at the time as nothing more than another parental platitude, I can now profoundly say that I understand why they felt the need to warn me. This was my first experience traveling in Europe without my family, and even abroad, as a fully independent adult-and it truly is addicting. I can clearly see how some people actually find themselves staying longer than planned, or even indefinitely, when getting that first initial taste of different culture. For me, although I decided to appease my parents, my time in Rome is definitely only the first time that I will go abroad during my time in college. Just as I said before the program, I will always jump on every opportunity that my come my way to go abroad. Now, after spending a month on my own, I am more confident in my ability to navigate foreign countries and unfamiliar cultures. In the short time since I stepped off the plane in Seattle, I've fantasized about field programs in Patagonia, semester long exchanges to the Netherlands, and really about seeing every other corner of the world. But I'm still not even done with Italy, as I definitely plan to go back there someday.
One more thing I believe worth mentioning is something I found out about myself, on a trip outside the city of Rome, to the Amalfi Coast. While I can appreciate the beauty of thousands of years of history, in my eyes it is insignificant in comparison with natural beauty. Don't get me wrong, the Colosseum was incredible, Saint Peter's Basilica out of this world, and Bernini's sculpted works astounding-gazing upon the Amalfi Coast as we ferried from Capri blocked all else from my mind. The jagged cliffs, the layers of rock jutting at oblique angles from the water, and the unbelievably bright blue waves I will never be able to forget. The natural splendor of where the Italian coast met the Mediterranean was something out of a dream, and that experience has only furthered my resolve to pursue renewable energies, and do what I can to preserve the natural beauty of the world.
To sum it all up, I learned an incredible amount, more than I thought possible in a month. I could tell you about baroque churches, palazzi, how marble first started being used in classical roman antiquity, and all about how Rome has a knack for borrowing power symbols from ancient roman culture. But what I think I really discovered during my time abroad, something that wasn't part of the syllabus and what I found during my research project, was how I realized that there is still so much in this world I need and want to see, learn, and do-and now is a better time than ever to push myself to places and heights I've never been.