CHE PAZZESCO!

CLASSES. My program involves 3 classes at the Middlebury school in Florence (the “Sede” which means, basically, “place”. I really feel like they could’ve done better with the name) and 1 class at the Università di Firenze. We’ve all been kinda nervous about starting our university class, but they weren’t scheduled to start until October 14. No sweat! Granted, there wasn’t even a course list yet, but whatever! There was plenty of time! Suddenly, last week, Rosa (our direttrice) held an emergency summit with all of the students. The course list had been posted! The schedule was available! CLASS STARTS MONDAY! Needless to say…we were all a bit freaked out. Here are some contributing factors to the insanity:
1. According to some Italian references, it was entirely possible that our class WOULDN’T start and we could show up to an empty classroom, that is, if we could find the classroom, because
2. We had NO idea where any classrooms were. The Università is spread throughout the whole city and your class could, potentially, be anywhere. On the orario it would say like, “aula B” which means “classroom B” and we’d be like what! What room! What building! What!
3. There were only certain courses we could take for the Sede. There are these “modulo” things that the courses have. What is a modulo, you may ask? I don’t know, either, but I had to take at least 2.
4. Not all the classes that appeared on the course list appeared on the schedule for the classes. So this could mean that they either decided not to offer it, it was listed under some other name for reasons that remain unclear, or they just didn’t put it on the orario. Who knows? Not us.
5. The UniFi gives class on either Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday or Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. So even if you FOUND a class you liked, and it was one that was ok with Midd, and you knew where the classroom was, and you found it on the schedule, you STILL might not take it because there would be Saturday classes, and that is just not right.
So, needless to say, we were slightly confused. My roommates and I decided to just go to the Piazza Brunelleschi to try to scope things out. Why? Because everyone kept talking about the Piazza Brunelleschi but we didn’t really know why. So when we got there, we saw another Middlebury student who had actually been to a class (very impressive, I must say) and told us to go “inside the school” and “find the course listing.” Right. So we wander around for awhile, aimlessly getting in lines of students, basically joining in the fray with no real sense of purpose. Finally, we saw another Midd student who told us where the posting was. OH! There was a POSTING of when each course starts. Of course! Because they can’t all start on the same date! That makes far too much sense! So we go into this room and there are just students are far as the eye can see, all pushing each other out of the way, trying to get up to these signs posted in like, size 8 font. So in order to actually READ the sign you need to go back to your house and get a magnifying glass. No, not really, but it was bad. So I approach the board. This is me: I have no real sense of what class I want to take. I have like 10 options. Some of them are ok times, some of them are approved, some are not, I have a vague sense of when some of them meet, I have no idea where any of them meet. So I walk up to the board and start looking at classes. History of the Church? Oh, starts next week. Modern Italian lit? Oh, it’s happening…crap, right now. Here’s another course…but I don’t even know if I can take that…ok, starts next week. I don’t even know what this word MEANS. And all these Italian students are flocking around, pushing, smoking, drinking espresso, talking loudly, and they all have insane hair (this is my first reflection of Italian university students: the men really need to get their hair under control. Seriously. And just a brief comment on smoking in Italy: I saw someone smoking in a museum. And it was a museum employee.)

Well, out of the mayhem emerged some sense of reality, and I think I might actually be able to take a class or something. Of course, it might not start until, oh, December.