Hi from Firenze!

At this point I am 5 weeks into my experience in Florence and so far it has been fantastic! I have noticed some small differences in the way professors here teach compared to back home. Here most of them are completely opposed to the use of technology as a tool for notetaking, which is very opposite to my experience at Pitt. My exploring the city professor hates tech, we are only allowed to take handwritten notes, which has taken a bit of getting used to. I am currently taking 5 classes here: Museology, Italian 101, International Marketing, Global Management, and Exploring the Global City. Museology is by far my favorite. Mostly because it includes my favorite type of learning: experiential. Every week we go to a different museum and our professor lays out how it is run and tells us information about the various artifacts. I wish we had more classes like that at Pitt. Italian 101 is fine, I am not a language person so naturally I am not entirely fond of the class. However, I do have Italian 101 with two of my roommates which has been fun. Exploring the city has gotten interesting since we are now finally going out and exploring the city. It is truly interesting to see the different neighborhoods and have a local explain the recent changes that have been happening as Florence becomes a more globalized city. My other two classes International Marketing and Global Management are incredibly similar to classes back home. Lecture based, with a typical group project based structure. I have learned that 3 hour classes are not for me, I will never take another class with that time block again if I can avoid it. I believe the skills I have learned from my high school and Pitt have been incredibly useful here, especially when taking notes. I personally do not think that my clifton strengths come in handy here. I do not have an internship so they do not come into play, they will and have proven to be a valuable asset my chosen career path of sales. There is not a whole lot of difference in terms of academic culture that I have noticed except that professors teach for multiple universities here. I have noticed a lack of understanding of technology among my professors, it is very different to the US where everything revolves around different academic software like canvas.