Author: Margaret Oggs | Major: Finance | Semester: Summer 2025

Lake Bled Castle in Slovenia

This summer, I spent four weeks studying abroad in Paderno del Grappa, Italy at the CIMBA Italy program offered through the University of Iowa. I studied there this summer from May 19th – June 13th . I took two classes during my time here and got to travel on the weekends to many different areas throughout Italy and Europe such as the city of Verona or even Ljubljana, Slovenia. What sparked my interest in the program was the ability to stay on a campus-like environment and have a “home base”. Everything you could possibly need was on campus. We had dorms in one building, took our classes in another, and had outdoor activities all around. It was all in its own area, creating a place for us to come back to every weekend and relax after long traveling weekends and recharge before classes.

The two classes I took through the 4 weeks were titled The Global Consumer and Global Economics. The Global Consumer was taught by Arkansas’s own Molly Rapert, whileGlobal Economics was taught by a TU professor, Eric Olsen. What stood out to me in my classes was how unique the structure of them was. For example, my Global Consumer class was taught through articles alone. I loved this method of teaching because thearticles were gathered from multiple different sources with the intent of learning driven by fact-based data and sources. Additionally, my Global Economics class also learned through articles and real-world current events. We touched on topics like recent tariff debates and would use economic models, theories, and graphs to analyze these topics. My classes were unlike anything I had taken before, but I loved every minute of them!

Studying abroad taught me many valuable lessons about myself. My biggest takeaway is to know yourself and how you respond to stress. Going into this, I had never traveled very far before, especially without family. Studying abroad is a difficult adjustment for some people – me included! You will face many challenges and obstacles that make adjusting hard. People won’t speak English, navigating public transportation, different culture styles and slower paces of life, and, this might sound silly, no fast food! All these paired with thoughts

of missing home and loved ones can make adjustment very difficult. This forced me tolearn how I respond to stress and how to deal with it. Throughout the rest of my time at the U of A and into new phases of life such as my professional career, I will carry all the lessons I learned during my time abroad with me. Not many Americans get the opportunity to study abroad. I am very lucky to have gotten the chance to do so and see places throughout the world. For this, I am extremely grateful. I want to thank the University of Arkansas for offering a variety of programs and helping students who are looking to have this experience. I also give thanks to the Honors College for helping students get this opportunity and never failing to promote ways to make studying abroad possible. Through the help of many faculty and staff at the U of A, I was able to see places I would have never imagined, taken classes I thoroughly enjoyed, and learned valuable lessons about myself.