Journey Filled With Knowledge

Wed., Jan. 27, 1999

Jim Woolley Special To Opinion

The best year of my college experience at Gonzaga University was my year of study abroad. I spent my junior year in Italy in the Gonzaga-in-Florence program. In Florence I studied the Renaissance, the rich culture and the amazing art it produced. I ate the wonderful food and drank the vino. But more than anything I learned about the human person.

There was a bakery a couple of blocks from the pensione where I lived and I would stop there some days on my way to school. Early in the year, when my Italian was not well developed, I would point to various baked goods and the owner - I always called him signore - would tell me the name in Italian.

As the year progressed and my language skills got better, we would have longer conversations about anything from the weather to the sights I’d visited. Our relationship progressed from a baker and customer to almost friends in a way.

We were both exotic to each other. He was foreign and strange to me as much as I was to him, and knowing that helped me learn that on a human level people are the same regardless of cultural differences.

I also learned about myself during this year. It took traveling to a distant land, a foreign environment, to make me examine myself without the distortions caused by being in a home environment. I was out there, alone. It was sink or swim. I chose to swim.

Being so far away from home taught me to rely on myself. Having more freedom than I’d experienced before made me realize I can take my life in the direction I want to go. If I ever need to change that direction, it’s up to me.

During the year I also came to realize how important family is to me. I missed every major holiday from September 1997 to April 1998. That nearly broke my mom’s heart. Being away from my family made each phone call more special and our reunion when I returned to the United States a moment of joy.

My travels through Europe made me realize how beautiful the world is and how little of it I have seen. The year really whetted my appetite for travel and new experiences.

I am now a huge advocate for study abroad. Actually living in a foreign country, a foreign culture, is so much different than simply backpacking through it for a couple of months. When I have my own children I will provide them with the opportunity to study abroad because it has been such a mind-opening and growing experience for me.

Jim Woolley, 21, is a resident of Spokane.

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