As someone who is used to balancing full-time classes, a part-time job, and being heavily involved in student organizations during the school year, I expected studying abroad with only 4 classes to be a breeze compared to what I am used to. Quickly after the first couple of weeks of classes, I learned that taking classes here while devoting hours to planning trips during the week and traveling on the weekends was actually much more time-consuming than I expected. Traveling every weekend means you’re basically a full-time travel planner and will be constantly looking up new places to go, how to get there, and where to stay.
When it comes to planning trips, I have found the logistics of planning how to get to a location to be the most difficult part. Going into the semester, I figured I would be taking a lot of flights, but in reality I haven’t taken a single flight yet. I have found it hard to find flights for a good price that leave and come back at a good time. There are lots of cheap flights, but they tend to be at inconvenient times that don't work with your class schedule. Only having the weekend to get somewhere, you have to maximize your time as much as possible, which means ideally you are leaving on a Friday night and coming back on a Sunday night, but the options for flights at these times are limited. Luckily, the extended weekends and long break are much easier to book flights for and a good time to go further away. What I have personally found to be the most convenient for travel on the weekends are the trains and overnight Flixbuses. There are so many places you can get to on an overnight bus, and they allow you to maximize your time by getting to the destination early Saturday and getting back early Monday before class. We have been taking the train to Venice and then taking Flixbuses from there. Sleeping on a bus definitely isn't the nicest way to sleep, but it’s not as bad as I thought, and it's an affordable way to get to farther destinations outside of Italy.
The classes here have been fast-paced, but I’ve really enjoyed the way they are set up here. Having such small classes with anywhere from 6-20 students has allowed me to get to know my professors more and be more engaged in the classes. The workload varies significantly by class, but I have found it to be quite manageable, though definitely still something you have to spend lots of time on. It has been crazy how fast classes have flown by, as I just had some of my first exams and quizzes this week when it seems like class has just started.
Overall, I have just been very surprised by how fast time goes by here. With the weeks and weekends being so busy, everything goes by fast. It's crazy to think I am almost a third of the way through the program, but I have already gotten to go to so many cool places and have amazing experiences.