As it’s well known thanks to a number of movies and television series, the American school system is quite different from the Italian one (in general from that of European countries): in Italy you have to choose a degree program in a university, that includes a set of fixed classes that you can barely modify, and you have to follow them regardless you may think they are interesting or not, useful or not. If we want to take guitar lessons, or photography, or dance … we have to do it after school, during leisure time. There is nothing strange, we are used to it.
But for the other half of the world, things work in a totally opposite way : the university is a huge container which brings together “conventional” subjects and “alternative” ones …and others that I dare not even call subjects! here, you do not choose an undergraduate course, you choose a major. A major is nothing more than a vague indication of what to choose between your university courses, for example, if one wanted to do a major in economics, he should probably choose at least mathematics, included within a wide range of choice offered by the college, economics, a social science and history. In 4 years. And the rest? It can be filled in as they like, literally ! Students do not follow an average of more than 4 or 5 subjects of 1 credit per year (no, do not run to look for scholarships for the United States, 1 American credit worth nearly 10 of our workload … trust me). The subjects that are not part of their major may be of any kind: among the nicest examples , there is a class of make up, a dance class, yoga classes, music, photography … there are also some whose titles are still a mystery for me and I can’t guess what they really have to do with!
Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.
Personally, it’s a concept that I find wonderful! Especially since Italy works in a diametrically opposite way : the free choice is reduced to a minimum, like one subject per year, which must always be connected with your curriculum. And you get out of high school with a minimal knowledge of how the world, the life, work really is, and you immediately find yourself having to choose with reasonable certainty what will be your future .
For me this was a tragedy, so I chose something random enough to give me a general overview on several fronts (thus going to lose in depth on each) and finding myself at the end of my career without having the slightest idea what to do next. Just because I’ve never been able to try it! If I had gone to college here, I probably would have done anyway a major in economics or something. But then I would have also tried biology, and computer science, and sociology, and psychology … and why not, photography and dance . And now I would know if I like all these things or not, and maybe even know what I like most of all, in order to select it.
But we know, not all that glitters is gold: it does not seem so obvious, but the increase of possibilites of substantial choice also increases in parallel the difficulty of doing so. There are thousands of college students in certain subjects that are clearly much more desirable than others. So being able to choose and follow what you really want is practically a gold rush: a race to click faster, the precise moment when the access to the site opens up for registration. In the case of first-year students then, and unfortunately for us exchange, it also becomes a bit of a lottery, because all students in upper years (up to the fourth, that is) have the opportunity to register for courses by the end of the previous year. Consiering that this is the 3/4 of the student population of the college, for us there was really little choice.
And it’s not just like that! Americans love to make their life difficult and insert as many rules as possible everywhere: the course has a maximum number of seats, has yet to be “open”, and often has some prerequisites, or is only open to students of some specific college, or, worst of all, requires the written permission of the teacher in order to be included in the curriculum . So it becomes really delusional, because it’s all about picking up available courses here and there, as you wait for two or three professors to respond to the request for closed classes, or while you go “course shopping ” (that is, going to the class to try it….if the professors let you in, actually) for courses to understand what the best is. Oh, and in the meantime we must also try not to overlap the subjects actually inserted, considering also the potential ones which are not confirmed yet! And as almost all courses are between 10 am and 4 pm, Monday to Thursday, overlapping them is really easy…during early morning and evening, as well as on Friday, they only have an occasional lesson here and there. Do yyou thing this may be better? Not really … not if you want to take 6 courses, in your initial shopping period, and 4 of them overlap …in that case, well, best wishes!
Courser overlapping on my schedule!
Then I can absolutely say that it is not easy : it is quite stressful and complicated as a system. The extreme freedom has its drawbacks. But I can’t really criticize it: I find that all the problems and difficulties of the world, however, fail to take anything away from this wonderful system . Here subjects such as physics and dance, music and engineering, mathematics and the philosophy of language have the same value, the same dignity . Each contributes to the individual-student growth in its completeness and uniqueness. And I believe that no student can get out of here without knowing if it is good at what he chose to do then: in fact, he will have already tried a bit of all, experienced, discovered new passions and wrong turnes . He will be complete. None of them need to know at 18 years if he wants to become a doctor, or a lawyer, or a painter or photographer. He‘ll find it out slowly growing. AMAZING!!!!