Culmination (6-1-09)

To start off I would like to thank all of those that have been part of this trip. This includes those that have been following my blog (Family and Grandparents), those that have been in communication from home (Clarkson Publications Department), the students that have been on the trip with me, and special thanks to Professor Frascatore and Wears for doing a great job at orchestrating the entire trip. Now that I have had a few hours to think about this trip (this plane ride back is really long) I’m going to weigh the pros and the cons of the trip and with these I will note some possible amendments to the trip.

PROS:

• · Wonderful sites and attractions and we couldn’t have asked for better professors to guide us along the way.
• · The hike up Mount Vesuvius was definitely worthwhile.
• · The small businesses seem to work great. What I mean by this is that at the small businesses I always saw more hospitality towards us and I feel like because of this we were able to communicate more with them and thus learn more from them.
• · This year’s group was a great group to travel with. I find that everyone got along to some degree and that we are all leaving better friends than we would have ever thought of. I also found that our group was quite responsible and that we all greatly enjoyed the trip.
• · The individual projects worked quite well. I think we all got something out of the reports and it was also fun attempting to go to all the places that the class had researched.
• · The kitchenettes in our rooms I think were quite useful and I think it did save me quite a bit of cash over the entire trip.

CONS:

• · Some of the businesses I find we didn’t really need to visit and it almost seemed like we were not worth their time. Some of these businesses / places include Nestle Factory and the Navy Base. I thought that we were going to go to these companies for more than just a tour; I was expecting to learn something through them and be able to ask intelligent questions too.
• · The group of thirty was a little too big. I could see how last year’s class of nine was too small but this year the group was too big. It was difficult to hear everyone at all of the factories and it was also difficult to transport us all up and down Italy. I mean when you go out to dinner with a group of fifteen people, which happened occasionally, it is difficult to not only find a place to eat but it is also difficult to figure out the bill and such.
• · Professor Gwynne is a great and extremely intelligent man but for those that are not as interested in history as others he can come across as a boring man. I would have loved it if he was more specific about one time period and / or if we had shorter classes with him because most of the time I had a very difficult time following his train of thought for the two and a half hour classes.
• · The Rosetta Stone course was useful at getting our feet wet in the language but I feel that the Rosetta Stone was a lost cause because it covers such a broad topic range. For that reason I would have much more preferred a professor to teach us Italian in the states so that way we could be more specific such as learning how to order food and how to meet and great people effectively. With this proposition I must touch upon Professor Maurizio Valtieri. Maurizio is a very intelligent man too but I feel that the language courses that we took in Italy were a waste. I never really learned anything from these classes because I picked up most of it from the Rosetta Stone course. I also didn’t really see the point of using him when we cut the class short due to different reasons pretty much every class. This will be interesting to see how this works out but I feel that how it is right now just didn’t work effectively.

Now I know that it looks like there are a lot of negatives but there really isn’t. The reason why the negatives look long is because I wanted to elaborate on the things that I think needed fixing so that way next year’s trip can be even greater than this year’s trip! Overall this trip was an amazing trip and I’m really glad I was able to go. I strongly advise this trip to anyone that is thinking about it. I had a fun time and I made some great friends. So as I post my final blog entry for this trip I will say two last words. First off I would like to day that I would strongly go on this trip and that if you do go travel as much as possible. My second and final word is that if you have any questions or comments feel free to contact me. I can be reached at fogartjj@clarkson.edu.