Arcadia University- Accademia Italiana Florence

Studying abroad in Florence, Italy was the best experience in my life. From living so close to the Duomo, being able to walk to my school and experience the culture firsthand was amazing. I felt extremely safe as I would always travel in groups, and the staff provided us with many useful tips on how to get around. I would wake up in the morning, go to the local bakery outside my apartment to get an espresso, walk to school, complete my classes, and walk home and cook dinner with my friends. At night, we would often go out to the clubs. Florence had an amazing social scene. As for school, my teachers all were extremely nice and helpful and seemed to care about they students. I would study abroad again in one second.

In September of 2013, I landed in Florence and did a full academic year at Accademia Italiana. Being a fashion major, this was an amazing fit for me personally but I was also able to connect with students from a diverse range of concentrations, including graphic design, interior design, and art history. I never realized how fully I had immersed into my life in Italy until a comment from my wonderful Pattern Drafting professor caught my attention. She responded to a request for me to move my seat by saying: "But she always sits there!" Having been there only one semester, I was already a fixture in university life and always found the staff welcoming and helpful.

In addition to their great art and design courses, Accademia Italiana offers Italian language courses to all of its students. I've studied Italian since high school and this was an amazing chance for me to practice
my skills and really dive into learning conversational Italian. Though my speech still isn't perfect, after spending a year in Florence I can understand almost everything I hear, which is a huge improvement from how I was when I landed. Accademia also offers separate weekend trips that are free for students and go to different cities including Rome, Sorrento, Siena, and more; independent travel is also extremely easy to organize.

Summing up an entire year of living in Florence is incredibly hard to do. All in all, Arcadia and Accademia Italiana gave me the opportunity to really establish a life abroad. I was not simply a student going overseas to party and mingle only with other American students, I became a resident in Florence and learned more about the city and its culture than I ever expected and made lasting friendships that are still going strong almost another year later.

The program at Accademia Italiana, Florence was wonderful. I was a junior in college when I decided to study abroad so I didn't have enough classes available to take a full semester, I did however get to take this shorter two month program. It is shorter than the full semester programs but the staff made sure to pack in so many wonderful experiences. Traveling as a group, and visiting local restaurants and sights, the staff made sure we were safe and having a great time. Since it was a summer program we were allotted a great amount of free time to travel around europe, the staff was always willing to help us arrange trips and give us tips and resources. As an art student with a minor in art history my favorite part was my art history class. Although our class was solely focused on Michelangelo our teacher took the opportunity to take us to a ton of museums and show us all of the important pieces central to florence and italy as a whole. This was a life changing experience I loved every second of it!

It could have been simply me just not paying attention earlier, but when I first arrived at Accademia Italiana is when I discovered it was mainly a schoool for fashion. I was the only Illustration student in the school's population as far as I knew, and almost the only one wearing tennis shoes (I felt very out of place!) Regardless of that though, I still enjoyed the classes I took. All the teachers were helpful and enthusiastic, and encouraging. I made few friends because many people were already friends with each other - unlike me, the only person from my university to be attending that school. The school trips were fun, although I wish the Rome trip was more than two days.