Hailey Latona, Pitt in Florence, Fall 2025
While I studied abroad in Italy, some of the biggest learning moments I experienced were outside the classroom.
One of the biggest lessons I learned was time management. I balanced an internship working 20 hours a week with a full course load while maintaining a social life, visiting museums, and attending special lectures. I also traveled many weekends to explore beautiful Italy! I was really only able to experience Florence so thoroughly due to excellent time management skills that I was forced to develop so I could maximize my time abroad. One trick I used to manage everything I wanted was prioritizing tasks based on proximity to my location. Since I could always return to something far away later while I was in the area, choosing events clustered near each other allowed me to minimize the commute between activities, therefore allowing me to have days very dense with various experiences.
While I was in a new place, I chose to embrace the new ideas, foods, and activities wherever I could. Although I always liked trying new things, being in Italy I tried foods I never would have tried at home because it was prepared differently. I tried crostini, thinking it was like the “gray stuff” from Beauty and the Beast. It was only after tasting it, eating it, and smiling satisfied, did I learn I had chicken liver and anchovies on a piece of bread. Had you asked me before my experience abroad, I would have answered I didn’t like anchovies and was not even willing to try liver. I also tried lampredotto, a tripe prepared in a classic Florentine style, and cacciucco, a fish soup. I also learned to cook with new ingredients; I experimented with green pumpkins and broccoli pesto. To keep trying new things, I always sampled in small bites. I tried to do one small thing a day, and this allowed me to find something novel about each day so I could remember something different about every day.
Finally, I grew to enjoy my time alone much more than I did before. I am a people person to my core, so I often like having someone to join me for activities. Even though I was surrounded by other students who were in similar classes to me and also interested in Italy, we all had different schedules, and I often struggled to find people who were interested in the same museums and available at the same time as me. This meant I often attended sites, like churches and museums, on my own. As I became more comfortable with this, I also took myself out to dinner and even did solo trips. Eventually, I preferred these trips since I didn’t have to compromise on what to see or explore. This complete control made my experiences more memorable since I could look forward to every detail of a trip and feel the gratification of each successful moment.
These skills may not be unique to exclusively study abroad, but the rich stories and unique memories I made learning how to manage my time, try new things, and value my independence allows the lessons to stick even more.
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