New Experiences (paragliding off of Mount Grappa)

Author: Leslie Johnson | Major: Accounting | Semester: Summer 2023

I was originally captivated by CIMBA because of all of the enthusiasm about the program not only from previous students but also Arkansas professors. CIMBA also provided a level of comfort because many of the teachers hired to teach classes for the session were Arkansas professors. This added an aspect of home all the way across the ocean. In terms of academics, CIMBA allowed me to take two business classes on track towards my major. I used this opportunity to take Intro to Finance and Intro to Marketing. Another advantageous aspect of CIMBA is that my classes were taught by professors from other schools:  Kansas University and Furman University. Kansas University is another big school like Arkansas, but Furman is a much smaller school which would allow for a different teaching perspective compared to the normal SEC experience we receive at Arkansas. At first, it was difficult to tackle two courses in just a month because we all had to jump into the subjects because we only had limited time. However, when courses are stretched out for an entire semester it can be easy to slip behind and work and zone out of the material; at such a fast pace, all of the information in four weeks kept me engaged and I honestly feel like I learned more than in a semester. I’ve also attached a photo of the final academic benefit of studying abroad in Italy. The photo captioned “Moon Boots from TECNICA” is when my Marketing class got to take a field trip to a popular global company and take a look at their foreign marketing perspective. In the picture is one of their wildly known products, the “Moon Boot”. A couple of my friends own a pair of the popular fashion brand boots, so it was really cool to see how their company works comparing the US perspective to their Italian business culture.

Moon Boots from TECNICA

CIMBA is located in Paderno del Grappa which is a very small town centralized around the school we were in. Personally, I feel like being in a small town allowed us to be better immersed in the culture than if we had studied in a major like Rome or Florence. This is because the major cities have become very tourist-oriented, so it can be difficult to differentiate authentic culture from a tourist trap. Paderno did not give us any confusion in that area; there was one local “Sports Bar” café, one pizzeria, and one gym. Not to mention all of these places were family owned and the knew very little English. This is very different considering I saw a Starbucks and 4 McDonalds in Rome.  I was also able to take advantage of the free travel weekends that CIMBA offered to go explore places and cultures outside Italy. One weekend my friends and I traveled to Pula, Croatia. I’ve attached a photo of a famous delicacy I tried in Croatia called Black Risotto, which is risotto that’s dyed black with squid ink. It was so delicious and was just one of the many examples where I was encouraged to venture outside of my comfort zone.

New Foods (Black Risotto from Croatia)

After hearing about my amazing moments at CIMBA, I have a few parting pieces of advice to wrap up this journey. The first piece of advice is to separate school time and fun time. The limited amount of time for classes means that you have to be focused and engaged or the classes will seem extremely fast. With that being said, take the weekends and travel time to have fun and not worry about anything else; you want to be able to focus on all parts of your surroundings to get the best parts of your experience. Secondly, keep pushing your comfort zone and do it with friends. It can be hard to be brave and adventurous when you’re doing it by yourself, but if you want to jump off a mountain like I did (in the paragliding photo) at least bring a friend to jump with you. That goes hand in hand with my final piece of advice: make friends. CIMBA has students from all over the US: Kansas, Iowa, West Virginia, Indiana, Oklahoma, Texas, etc. This is a good opportunity to meet all kinds of people and also expand your network for the future. You never know which relationships can help you get an internship, job, or promotion, so you might as well make as many as you can.