Imagine deciding to go to a foreign country you only know from movies and books, whose language you speak only on a base level, and spending there a year of your life, would you do that? This was one of the questions I asked myself two years ago when I was trying to decide whether to send an application for an exchange year in the USA, and the answer to this question didn’t come overnight.
Anyway, after thinking about it for some months, I finally sent my application and started what I think I’ll always remember as one of the best years of my life. The day I received the email that confirmed my enrolment in the program was distinguished by a mixture of feelings; I was filled with joy since I’d get to go live this experience, but at the same time I felt anxious: what if I didn’t like my host family? What if living in the US wasn’t as I expected? What if, once I got there, I wasn’t happy with my choice?
It didn’t take long for these negative thoughts to go away, and, a couple of weeks later, as I was about to embark on the flight that would get me to my destination, the only emotions that I felt were joy and impatience to start this wonderful year.
As it turned out, the USA we see in movies is only a superficial view of what it really is, and even if it isn’t a culture born thousands of years ago, I found a beautiful and surprising mix of cultures, all united under the American lifestyle that fills every aspect of life in the US but leaves every single culture the space in society for it to thrive and to be conserved. The State I was hosted in, Washington State, and its main city, Seattle, with almost a third of its population being Asian, is one of the most multicultural and progressive areas of the United States, making it one of the most advanced states in the granting of personal and civil rights, openness to progress and the preservation of nature. Washington state is also one of the richest states being home to big multinational tech companies such as Amazon, Microsoft and Boeing and has a big musical culture being the place where giants such as Nirvana, Bing Crosby and Jimi Hendrix were born.
The fulcrum of life for a teenager in the US is High School. Unlike it is normally in Italy, American High School is not only a place where a student studies, but it is the centre of almost all the activities a teen carries on throughout his life and the place where a student can cultivate his passions, whether they regard sports, art or technology, and allows the student to consolidate not only the academic basis for his future, but also his social skills and his personal health. American High School starts at 8:00 am and ends and 2:25 pm, although schools are now switching to a 9:00am-3:00pm schedule, with four 80 minutes classes, 10 minutes passing periods between classes and a 45 minutes lunch break. But this is only the academic part of American School. In fact, the school and the students organize a wide range of after-school activities, such as sports, clubs, and the Activity Board Committee (a student Senate led by a representative that addresses the problems of the school to the Dean of Students). Sports are the most important part of the life of a student apart from school, as they can earn the student various titles and grants to play in college sports, which are almost more important than pro-league sports, and are live streamed on national tv (such as the NCAA football league or the March Madness Basketball Tournament).
But why should someone decide to live an experience like this, leaving school, friends and family for a year and going on the other side of the world? Everybody has a different answer to this question; somebody does it for the language, somebody sees it as a vacation year, but I think the key aspect of this experience is to challenge yourself and go over your limits, mentally and culturally, trying to adapt to a new lifestyle and open to different cultures which are not only the one of your host country, but also the ones of other fellow exchanges students from other parts of the world. Is it worth it? I think it is, few things can give you what an year abroad can, whether you go to the US, Sweden, Indonesia or Honduras, you will remember this experience forever and, once you come back, you’ll even discover aspects of your culture you didn’t notice before.
Davide Vezzoli, 5 A Scientifico
