Reading back this reflection I know it’s very disjointed. I wrote some of it slowly over months and then a lot all at once in the airport to go home. I’ve titled the sections to give it some structure.
LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION
When asked to reflect on the most valuable thing I gained from my time in Italy, it would definitely be a larger capacity for empathy and better communications skills.
Milan is a working city, having the best wages in the country. Like Australia it has a high population of migrants seeking a better life. For many people Italian isn’t their first language
Being understood is such a precious thing. Generally, Australians are of the mind that everyone they meet should speak English and they have little empathy for those who don’t. I witnessed this a lot in my years working in retail, where my colleagues would sigh and make rude remarks when faced with a language-based misunderstanding with a customer. The Italians are very proud of their culture, and their language is no exception to this, making it a very forgiving atmosphere to learn, (most) people I spoke to were thrilled that I was trying to learn the language. The best interactions I had, especially in my early days were ones where I told them ‘Sto imparando Italiano’ (I’m learning Italian), and the other person would excitedly turn our conversation into a little lesson, speaking clearly and slowly without being patronising, making small corrections to my pronunciation and pointing to relevant objects while naming them for me. We both left those interactions feeling good; I will bring this attitude back to Australia, knowing how much it helped me.
The few times people put me in a crueler learning environment it only made me reflective of how I’d seen the same interactions happen in the UK and Australia. When I went to get my tax code I got lost and my mobile data wasn’t working. After walking for about half an hour in the middle of nowhere, I decided to go into a shop to ask for directions. The lady responded briskly and when I asked her to please repeat what she was saying slower she exclaimed ‘Santa Maria! Lei no ha Italiano!’ (‘Saint Maria! She doesn’t have Italian!’). She walked away and sent her colleague over to deal with me, who proceeded to talk to me very loudly as if that would get the message across and make me understand. In actuality it just made me stressed, feel stupid and not comfortable enough to confirm I had actually understood what was said. It’s a stereotype of native English speakers that if someone doesn’t understand them, they’ll simply talk louder. Clearly this happens in other cultures too, but it’s definitely less common.
We’re all held back by our limiting beliefs, and while I can’t ignore they might have truth to varying degrees, we make them more true the more we believe them. One of mine is that I’m ’bad at learning languages’ and would never reach fluency in anything other than English. This stems from growing up with dyslexia (and Madame Ball in year 7 French class), due to my neurodivergence there is some truth in this, but the strides I was able to make with Italian have changed the way I think about language learning. In my head I replace words with a series of formulas and laws, languages are a puzzle you build piece by piece, you collect the edge pieces and make them into your framework then fill in the gaps outside to in. The more pieces you collect the more you understand the full image. One of the reasons I chose Italy for the location of my exchange was for language learning - I’m so pleased I did.
SOLO TRAVEL AND GUERNSEY
I was fortunate enough to have over a month of travel before my semester started. I wanted to do this part alone, having never done a solo trip before. To my surprise most solo travelers I met were also women, my theory about this is they have a greater sense of needing to prove themselves. I found travelling alone made it easier to connect with new people than when I’ve done it with friends, there’s no one to lean on socially so there’s more motivation to reach out. I brought a little notebook with me to journal and reflect throughout, which added a lot of value to the trip. I've been surprised reading it back now at how much I’ve forgotten.
I had also challenged myself to only bring a carry-on backpack to Europe. There was something about that Idea that really excited me, like it's just me and my bag against the world, staying in grubby hostels and reading my kindle on budget buses. I got the idea from an American lady I met while backpacking in Brazil. She'd recently lost her job and had been going wherever life took her for over a year – ‘running away from winter’ she had said - booking whatever was cheapest and looked nice, living out of her backpack. I thought it would be a good exercise in becoming more conscious of my need for possessions, I often reflect on all the ways advertising makes us believe we need things, feeling inadequate without, and though I would end up needing a checked bag on the way back (mainly for my kryptonite of silly old Italian books) I still think it was a good experiment, plus it saved me lots of money on luggage!
My first stop was Paris, excited to revive my high school French and see the sights I set off; on the second night I met someone who would greatly change my exchange experience, though I wasn’t aware of it yet. Felix is an half Austrian half Irish man who’d left Ireland to live in Sevilla and was now living in Basel in Switzerland. He is the least judgmental person I had ever met; he had time and curiosity for everyone. He described places he had been as products of the people he met there and the stories of their lives. We had a surprising amount in common and got on immediately. We stayed in touch and once I was settled in Milan, he visited a few times (it's only three hours on the train).
I knew if I was in Europe I must go to Guernsey, so that’s where I went next. I had moved to Australia from Guernsey 5 years ago under difficult circumstances. It all happened very quickly, I had been heartbroken and furious with my parents, but looking back I know it was the right decision, and I am so grateful for the move and all the opportunities it resulted in. I wasn’t sure how I would feel going back, many of my friends have since moved to England for university.
The homesickness hit me in waves as soon as I saw the airplane. There's only one airline that goes to Guernsey called Aurigny and they have the Islands’ flag on all their aircraft. An old friend, Eleanor, picked me up at the airport with her girlfriend, everything I saw made my heart ache and I burst when she got out of the car. They took me on a drive around the island while we caught up.
When you haven’t seen someone for that long it's almost impossible to know where to start. My eyes were glued to the window, taking it all in, the tiny streets, stony walls and little granite houses. I hadn’t realised how deeply I’d missed it. I crammed in as many cliff walks and catch ups as I could over those next few days. I know I will have to go back again someday; Guernsey is such an important part of who I am, I had started to forget. I never know what nationality to introduce myself with anymore, none of my family are Guern but we lived there for 16 years so I’ve never really felt Australian (though technically that’s the only country I have any legal right to), I also don't think I sound terribly Australian so it’s confusing to introduce myself as such. No matter what I say I feel like I’m lying. In my day-to-day it doesn’t come up often, but when you’re regularly meeting people from all over the world, it's a major conversation topic.
There are so many wonderful things about Guernsey, I spent a very special night with my adopted family or my ‘Thursday gang’. Growing up all my family lived in Australia or Canada, but I had a group of 3 friends whose mums were my Mum’s friends and every Thursday we would rotate houses for dinner and play dates. This went on for as long as I can remember, they became our little family of sorts, I would even call the adults my aunts. I would struggle to move back there for good, the housing prices are one barrier and another is how small it is - growing up I never noticed because I was used to it, to me Guernsey was the center of the world, but it's only 90 km^2 and I definitely felt that being back (writing ‘the houses looked like toys’).
I got the ferry from Guernsey to Cherbourg (a tiny French town with nothing going on), and went through Rennes, Mont Saint Michelle and Nantes before flying to Madrid. I was worried I would get bored of my own company, and definitely felt it the most on this stretch, the hostels were quiet, and I didn’t meet that many people. My first night in Madrid however I met some cool people and it got better from there. The best part about hosteling is the people, it’s the most welcoming environment. You'll have one conversation with someone and be invited to sight-see with them all day.
OCCUPIED HOUSES AND ITALIAN LESSONS
The current government in Italy is predominantly right wing, with extreme views comes extreme opposition. Round the corner from my apartment I noticed a building painted with angry red letters and images of riots. Naturally I stayed well away from it and was nervous when passing by. When Felix visited, he told me I should go check it out some time, which surprised me, he said it was just an occupied house or a sort of organised ‘squat’ (‘They’re just a bunch of lefty socialists, they’re harmless’). When I was in class he went and looked at their upcoming event notice board and took a photo of all the Italian classes they had to offer, knowing that I wanted to learn. From then on, I went two or three times a week, I’m endlessly grateful to Felix for introducing me to these classes and this incredible community.
Much of the immigration there happens illegally so the classes are advertised as not requiring any documentation (as is required for literally everything else in Italy), the classroom was a small room with a chalkboard in the entrance hall of the house, decorated with yellowing anti- fascist posters and filled with people from every country and background, all eager to learn.
In the classroom we are all equal, the lessons took place entirely in Italian, when there were misunderstandings, we all helped each other through, with our snippets of shared language -Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese, and Hebrew. We all encouraged and congratulated each other on learning new things with enthusiastic ‘Brava’‘s. These lessons were truly a special experience I will take with me always.
There was a Monday morning one for women only (more to do with religion than safety), then three levels of evening classes, all of which I attended across my stay. After about two months of attending class regularly, the teacher suggested I try the next level up. I was excited to go to the Wednesday class, though it was a big step up in difficulty. My first class was a bit rattling. We were practicing our tenses and had to answer questions about why we came to Italy and what we'd been excited about, how it was different from what we expected etc. I was eager to prove myself to the new teachers and wrote a lot, talking about my ambitions in engineering and all the things I’d been looking forward to, mainly food, meeting new people and adventure.
Once we’d answered we took turns reading them out, I was towards the end in order. The Wednesday class had no women, most of the men were from Egypt or Morocco, they spoke about how they had left their countries in difficult conditions, how they were here to work and support their families, how much they missed them and the difficult journeys they’d taken to get to Milan.
Many had been on crowded boats or long and arduous land journeys. A man who’d fled Syria talked about traversing the Russian mountains for days. It made me ashamed of my lighthearted ramblings about pizza and pretty buildings, so I ended up crossing most of it out. I came home in tears, feeling like I should stop going to class to not take anything from these people or this service. I called Felix who said that from his experience people displaced by difficult circumstances find it hard to be accepted into the societies they seek asylum in, so they enjoy being able to socialise with ‘regular people’ (‘they probably love having a little Aussie chick like you around, it makes them feel normal’). While this was comforting to hear it did hurt my heart, how after all they go through to live a safe comfortable life they’re still not welcomed - their struggles aren’t over.
I visited many other occupied houses (‘Casa Ocupada’ in Italiano) throughout my time in Italy (and some in other parts of Europe), I was fascinated and amazed by the things they could accomplish. I’m aware it's a foreign concept to most Australians so I’ll write a bit about it here.
Generally, if a large building is left vacant for a long time it tends to be either government owned or empty for tax reasons (a horrible thing when people are in need of homes). Eventually some of these houses are occupied and a community with its own mini system (weekly meetings, chore rosters etc) is established. Some of the ones I saw in Italy had been running for more than 20 years or had even won court cases to allow them to keep living there legally. The core values are providing for the community and creating a safe home for those who are in need, if you want to live in the house it has to be approved by the other occupants, and you pay nothing but have to provide a service to the community. Common examples of this are social dinners, where people can come and pay a few euros for a good meal (or free if needed) once a week, free language schools (like the ones I attended), free medical attention from licensed practitioners, music lessons and live music events to raise money for the house (these were some of my favourite events) or protests.
STUDYING AT POLIMI (Politecnico Di Milano)
Another thing I have reflected on is how my attitude to learning has changed from studying at Polimi. Something I didn’t account for when I chose which Uni to go to was how the different assessment schedules would change my experience. Most subjects at Polimi have no assignments but instead do 100% exams, these are famously very hard and have very low pass rates, but students have the opportunity to take the exam 4 times a term over four months (not a great system for exchange students). I wasn’t a fan of that structure but it did help me a lot with self-management because I didn’t have my usual checkpoints of assessment pieces. My professors were excellent. I had one who only ever used a chalk board and knew all 65 hours of content for his class by heart! The Italian students were also very keen to hang out with us, which I wasn’t
expecting – I have never made friends with an exchange student. I guess I found it hard with the underlying knowledge that they’ll soon leave for their home country, when I said this to my Italian friends, they seemed surprised (‘when else would I get to be friends with someone from Australia!’). Seeing this attitude will definitely change the way I interact with exchange students moving forward, knowing how much it enriched my experience.
One thing that was emphasised at Polimi was having a strong understanding of how we created the equations we use. We had to learn pages of derivations for the exams, which was incredibly stressful but did work in deepening my understanding of the math behind concepts. This and other study practices I am going to try and replicate at UQ.
IT WASN’T ALWAYS GOOD
I think it's also important to acknowledge that it wasn’t all good, I noticed amongst my other friends on exchange that they seemed uncomfortable talking about areas they weren’t enjoying or maybe just that they weren’t loving it as much as they imagined they would, for some reason it makes you feel like you’ve failed in some way. Or maybe it's the constant questioning if you’d have been happier somewhere else. There were times I felt like this in Milan too. The biggest thing I struggled with was sleep. I've always had on and off insomnia but I generally don’t go more than a week without a good sleep. In Milan I went for about two months. It got to the point that I dreaded bedtime, I used every tool given to me in therapy to cope with it plus my prescribed medication and melatonin supplements to no avail. Night after night I would lie there with my eyes closed and hope, some nights I was lucky enough to get a few hours but many days I would be in class having not slept at all. It makes you feel like you’re losing your mind, I would get random sweats and chills, my memory was dissipating, I couldn’t regulate my emotions and sometimes I heard things that weren’t there. It made my anxiety pretty hard to deal with at times, generally it would come on strong when I was struggling to focus on study and I would launch into an attack, I had to leave the library a few times. This is the worst my insomnia has ever been.
I think I can partially attribute it to stress, with opportunities to take each exam four times, students are generally expected to fail things at least once but due to how our accommodation was arranged I would only be there for the first sitting. I knew there was a high chance of failing something and one of our exams had a 30% pass rate (I was very proud to pass this one first time!). Though this was a very stressful period for me and after about a month and a half of continuous long study days I was very burnt out. I am grateful for some of the skills it taught me, I ended up passing 5 out of 6 of my exams, failing the last one mainly because there was nothing left in me. There are opportunities to take it in a different session online so I will be doing this for my failed exam later in the year.
TRAVELLING AFTER THE SEMESTER
In my last few weeks, I set off travelling again, Felix and I went through Albania and to Istanbul together. Travelling with him was incredible, he’s like a walking encyclopedia of interesting history facts, and obsessed with language and people. There were so many things I wouldn’t have noticed or thought of if it wasn’t for him, I learned so much, it’s going to completely change the way I travel. Leaving him at the airport shattered my heart (‘I am in agony, nothing feels real, it’s like I’m floating’). I haven’t cried like that in years, I’ve never been embarrassed to cry in
public and I think I sobbed the whole plane ride. I was on my way to meet some friends in Greece (also on exchange), we had an Airbnb on Naxos so the journey was a plane to a bus, a long wait, then a boat and a taxi. It was about 12 hours all up, but I barely noticed, I was just numb the whole time. I know I’ll be sad about Felix for a long time, this may be my naivety but I believe I was falling in love with him. My Mum moved to the country to be with my Dad when she was 19, and the thought definitely crossed my mind, but I’ve got too much to do in Australia and I’ve worked too hard for my life there. Saying this I really hope I see him again one day.
Karla was my best friend in Guernsey, and she came travelling with me, joining my friends and I in Naxos. From there we went to Athens and finished in Belgium. I’m finishing this messy disjointed reflection on
the train from Brussels to the CDG airport near Paris. It doesn’t feel real that I’ll be back in Australia in 30 hours (of being uncomfortable), it’s a little sad but I’m also very ready to return. I miss my Mum like anything, I land at 6am and she's driving from the Sunny coast to pick me up (endlessly grateful to have such an amazing Mum).
I know that as soon as I land it’ll feel like waking up and nothing from the last 6 months was real, but I’ve learned and grown so much. I know I need to make a real effort to act on the things I’ve gained, normally I do a kind of goal setting evening at the end of each year but I’m going to do another one as soon as possible (it's already in my calendar). My journal and this reflection will also help me hold onto it. I've enjoyed typing this out, maybe it was a bit too personal but I’m not sure I can write a reflection that isn’t.
I’m excited to get on with my life in Australia, next on the agenda is getting some kind of engineering position (terrifying), finishing off my orthodontics with one more jaw surgery (equally terrifying) and overall, just working on becoming the most healthy, happy and value-aligned version of myself.
Megan Barkman
Edit (25/05/25): Felix is moving to Australia so see if we can make it work, I’m seeing him in 28 days)
