Hi! My name is Ken and I am a senior studying marketing and working towards a certificate in entrepreneurship at the University of Pittsburgh. I have absolutely no intention of going into marketing even though I am pursuing my marketing degree. In fact I already have full time job lined up in sales after graduation. I was bitten by the sales bug when I took a semester off of college and sold cars and knew that is what I wanted to do post grad. To tell you a little bit about myself personally, I grew up in the Baltimore area and am a proud Marylander (sorry Pittsburgh). My true passion in life is cars, anything to do with them. My dream is to work on my own cars and be successful enough to have my own performance shop. I knew coming into college that I wanted to study abroad for a semester, there is no opportunity quite like it. When I was 15 years old I was fortunate enough to go on a couple week trip to Italy with my parents. We went to all of the major cities of Italy and some gorgeous vineyards in the hills of Tuscany. I got to experience just a sliver of the deep culture in Italy, and out of all of the places I visited Florence was my favorite. That being the case coming to Florence was a very easy decision. I have a few goals for myself while in the program. I hope to deeply entrench myself in Florentine culture, learn enough Italian to have basic conversations with locals, and dive deeply into the economy of Florence and Italy as a whole broaden my knowledge of business on the global scale.

Taking classes in Italy has been interesting. I am a night owl in every sense of the word, back at Pitt I schedule all of my classes later in the day to accommodate this, so having a 9 am class every day has been an adjustment. However, I have started to enjoy my new schedule, it allows me more time during the day to explore the city. It is weird not having a traditional campus, the buildings are very spread out, but it is fun walking to different parts of the city and noticing a small new detail every day. To be completely honest 3 hour classes are rough, I am not a fan of that at all. Overall, I have had a good experience in my classes so far, especially my Museology class. It is really fun going to a new museum every week and learning about the rich history of Italy and how that particular museum runs and functions. I love where I live, it is in the heart of Florence where all of the restaurants and clubs are so everything fun to do is very walkable. I am living with 5 other guys, 3 from Pitt, 2 from the University of Iowa. They are all really great and we have been travelling on weekends together. However, I hate sharing a room and having roommates, I have essentially alone since I was 18 and I love it that way. That being said I have adapted to my new living situation very well, except the shower situation is a bit tense. Since the plumbing here sucks (that is putting it nicely) you can only run one shower at a time. With most of us having 9 am classes this makes showering in the morning a complete hassle. I excited to see what awaits me in the coming weeks!

Arrivederci!