Expectations

Hello folks. I will keep this blog informal, but informative. Let's start right away.

My name is Vas Blagodarskiy, I am a Russian-born student at the University of Maryland (from now on, UMD). I have lived in the United States since I was ten years old. I am bilingual, I love to travel, and I am an entrepreneur. I decided to study abroad in Rome, Italy at the end of my first year of college. I am a rising sophomore, and although I know that most study abroad students partake in these types of programs in the second half of their academic career, I wanted to get a head start.

Why did I pick Rome, of all the wonderful summer study abroad options that were available? Few reasons. First and foremost, I love Europe. I was born there, and I've traveled all over with parents. Up until now, I've been to Russia (obviously), Ukraine, Germany, Austria, and Czech Republic. I thought this would be a great opportunity to "upgrade" my portfolio of cultural diversity. Second of all, I love pizza. You can't eat Costco's $2 slices and claim to be a pizza aficionado. I just had to try it for myself. Third, I like drama. Not soap operas - drama. This was an opportunity to check out the Anfiteatro Flavio, aka the Colosseum, first-hand. All in all, I wanted to go some place where I have never been before, and whose language I don't know at all.

I kind of missed the window of opportunity to write about my expectations of Rome as I'm typing this at the computer lab over at the American University of Rome. However, let me track back and think what my expectations were, so as to not spoil the remainder of the blog for you all :)

I expected to see beautiful architecture. I enjoyed it a lot last summer when I went to Germany, Austria and Czech Republic with my parents. From friends and family, I learned that Italy is no ugly duckling. I expected to see sights of the ancient city as they were hundreds of years ago.

I also expected smooth sailing as I flew here from Maryland, where I live. I've never had trouble traveling abroad before, and I've once traveled to Moscow to visit relatives by myself. This will be my second journey alone. Since I knew the "European mindset" I know that I will feel safe walking the streets (especially because we were told during orientation at UMD that Rome is statistically safer than any large US city). I also speak a tiny bit of French, so I expect to recognize some words right off the bat. I want to leave the city with a little bit of Italian, although immersing myself in a language that I know nothing about will be hard. I had to do it once when my family moved to America, and I know for a fact that a month will not be enough to learn much.

Last but not least, I expect to get two A-pluses in my two seminars. I don't want to call them "classes" although that's what they officially are, because this trip will be more like an educational summit for me. It's a fun-filled retreat, in a beautiful city, where I expect to learn a lot of new things that I will be able to implement at the company I work at immediately upon returning back. The classes I will be taking will transfer to UMD as Business-300 and -400 level classes, which will look great on my transcript. In the competitive age of "you weren't hired because your GPA was one-tenth lower than the guy we hired," getting as many As is crucial. I want to give these classes my all, and that started two weeks before I arrived, when I bought and read a prerequisite Marketing textbook for my Product Research And Development seminar with Professor Sonnabend.

Let the good times roll!