howl

I don’t know if everyone out there is familiar with Alan Ginsburg’s (sp?) Howl. It’s an amazing poem filled with clever rhetoric that he uses to comment on the atrocities of society in the 60s when he was a young Beatnik. Well, what I am about to give to you is a less poetic, less rhetorically demanding piece of “poetry” where in I comment not on the problems with society but on the problems with Syracuse University in Florence: SUF. Enjoy. Parental advisory is advised. Sensitive ears turn away.

I am fucking sick and tired of all this bullshit. It’s official, we have hit the one month remaining on the program and I regrettably find myself counting down the days because never in my life have I ever been so upset with an educational system. Before I begin, I just want to say that I didn’t come on this program to do homework with all of my spare time. No one in their right mind would want to do that with an entire semester living in a country abroad. No. But, I did expect some sort of mental stimulation. Sometime. I don’t think it’s too much to ask to go to class and be challenged. To sit down and have one of those amazing days where you are riveted because your mind is being blown and you have to sit and think out paradoxes or some other problem. But the fact that I feel that I haven’t gained any useful skills, and possessed but a small amount of extra knowledge gained is inexcusable. I have spent my last two years at Whitman College being bombarded with unbelievable amounts of stress and homework. I study for hours for exams and get Cs and Ds. I spend days on a paper, producing something I am so proud of, to find myself barely pulling through with a B. I have gotten used to finishing at the bottom of each of my classes because I am surrounded with students who WANT TO LEARN. Want to learn. Who would want to learn anything while studying abroad? That is the general attitude of the students and the classes match that attitude to the t. Students skip weeks of class on end and it doesn’t matter because they know that they don’t need the lecture material to succeed in the class. I know this too, but there is some scrap of, let’s call it self-motivation in me that prevents me from being able to skip classes and pour as much effort into a class as I can physically muster. It sucks. I wish I wasn’t that interested in my education, but I just can’t help it. I feel that since I am paying some exorbitant some of money to come learn here, I could at least be learning something. As it stands, I have lost a semester of my Whitman education by coming to Italy. On paper, it would appear that I could have some of my semester salvaged through my extra-curricular activities: basketball, soccer, the play. Well, I ended up having to stop playing basketball with the team because the play takes up too much of my time. This would be okay except the play is a godforsaken joke and the time I spend there is like having teeth pulled. And I feel terrible for saying that because our director is such a sweet man, he’s just terrible. He talks and talks and never lets us just act. He gives us line readings every two seconds and does everything they teach you in high school directing that you shouldn’t do. But he is a brilliant man (PHD from Yale!) and you can’t deny his passion for the theatre. It just needs to be re-assessed. School is terrible. This rehearsal process is gearing up to be the worst play I’ve ever been a part of (and I’ve been a part of some pretty shitty plays). The question is whether or not I have gained anything by being in Italy and living amongst Italians for two and a half months, and I think the answer is yes. Which is the only reason I’m not packing my bags and heading home. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, my favorite part of this experience so far is the home stay. My host mama makes some bomb-ass food. Incidentally, tonight was pizza night again and I almost passed out with joy and contentedness. My home stay and my seven amazing friends are what keep me going. But this monologular (that’s a word, don’t worry) complaint of mine is supposed to be completely negative, so let me keep ranting (you thought I was almost done, didn’t you? Suckas!)
But back to the students of this program. I have never seen such disrespectful, idiotic and scantily clad young people in my entire life. This makes me sound like an old man, I realize, but I am an old man at heart. There’s this problem with girls in leggings. Tights. That’s all they’ll wear on their bottom halves. With Uggz (a kind of expensive, fuzzy boot that is kind of like wearing rubber-soled socks) That is not clothing! You need to wear a pair of shorts or a dress or a skirt over leggings! Stick me in a red elephant costume and call me a conservative, but last time I checked it wasn’t a competition to see whose outfit would get ruined first in rain and wind storms (which, by the way, we do have here). They sacrifice comfort for proximity of visibility of genitals. Which is weird. You can’t wear that to school! Then they get surprised when they get a cold. Case study part I. There’s a girl in a class of mine, who personifies this above-mentioned fashion statement. We’ve been in class for two months now and she still can’t count to 10 in Italian. She can’t read Italian to save her life. She rocks the leggings senza pantaloni (as we say in Italia). I don’t want to go on because it’s starting to make me sad and angry again, but the point is, how can you NOT BE ABLE TO SAY ANYTHING OR UNDERSTAND ANYTHING IN ITALIAN AFTER TAKING A CLASS FOR 2 AND A HALF MONTHS. That is unforgivable. The worst part is that there are two other students roughly at her level of Italian and they never stop to ask questions because they don’t care. They don’t care at all about learning Italian! How!? How is that possible!?! Why are you here!? Leave! You don’t deserve to be here. Stop wasting everyone else’s time. The problem is, that is roughly half the students here. Half of the 280 students. They manifest their ignorance and rudeness in other ways too, which include rudely talking back to teachers, “going to the bathroom” three times in one class and just never going to class on Thursdays, among others. Everyone here sucks. This makes my small group of friends more special and more important in maintaining my sanity.
As I said before, it sucks that because of, in my eyes, a huge failure on the part of SUF, I want to go home. Maybe academics shouldn’t be that important on a study abroad program, but they are to me and I feel cheated. That’s the bottom line. If I was on a program where all the people there wanted to do more than go to Octoberfest and ride roller coasters drunk out of their minds, I may be enjoying myself better. As it stands, school here sucks.

That’s all I have to say. Reflect on my wisdom.

-AJC