Ciao! My name is Angelina Papagni and I am from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania which is about five hours east of Pittsburgh. I am a senior studying finance at Pitt and I also have a Certificate in Leadership and Ethics. Academic wise I am interested in accounting, finance and real estate and have completed an internship in Ireland at a real estate company as well as completed finance and accounting courses at Pitt. My professional interests in finance include commercial banking after completing my internship this past summer, I plan to continue commercial banking in my professional career.
This is my final semester at Pitt and I am so grateful to experience studying abroad one last time before I graduate. I am in the Pitt Global Business Institute Program in Firenze, Italy for the whole semester until December! A lot of my friends in prior semesters have completed this program and absolutely love it, and I wanted the opportunity myself to spend over three months in a European country that I could travel very easily in. One of my favorite things to do is travel and I am so excited to add more countries to my list this semester – in between classes of course. I come from an Italian background so Italy was the perfect destination to continue my studies and I hope to travel and visit the cities my ancestors are from during my semester here! Those parts would be in Bari and Sicily, so I am excited to continue learning in a whole new country.
From this experience, I hope to gain even more skills and mindfulness about traveling in countries other than the U.S., as well as putting myself in situations I am unfamiliar with in order to learn and figure out how to solve them. Personally, I want to travel as much as I can and academically I want to do the best I can in international finance!
I am living a little outside of the city center of Firenze and have about 20-25 minute walk to class each day. Our apartment is very nice and large for the five of me and my roommates to reside in for the next four months. We even have a dryer which is very rare for Italy, so it seems. I am not doing the internship part of the program but I am just focusing on my international finance class. I also get to take fun classes like Italian 1 with Jenny (whose amazing and from Pitt) and a drawing class! I always loved to draw so I am excited to continue it here. I am also taking art renaissance history so I can fully immerse myself in Florence while I am here and learn as much of the history as possible. My first impressions – I love Italy and I am happy this is my abroad destination. However, sometimes safety concerns being in a new country are present. It’s vital to stay in a group and to be aware of your surroundings here at all times. Overall, it’s great and I look forward to the next few months.
