Why did you decide to become an Italian major?
When I arrived at Wellesley, becoming an Italian major was very far from my mind. I went to an international high school in Italy before Wellesley and didn't have a positive experience learning Italian there. At Wellesley, I planned to fulfill my foreign language requirement with Estonian, my mother tongue. Due to a weird misunderstanding with the Registrar, that plan did not work out. I was forced to take another language and decided to try the Italian placement test. Despite my dislike of Italian, I had picked up enough in high school to place into 201 and I decided to give it a go (thinking, I can suffer through a year and be done with it). And then, professor Flavia Laviosa somehow made me like Italian that year. Before I knew it, I was voluntarily taking Italian literature classes and signing up to go study abroad in Bologna for a full year. I didn't declare my major until late in fall semester of senior year because it just seemed odd to me that I had come to like Italian, but I had. I was a reluctant major but Italian has now become a language I use every day.
How did it shape your time at Wellesley? How has it influenced your life after Wellesley?
The Italian department's ECCO program in Bologna not only shaped my relationship to Wellesley but also defined what I have done since Wellesley. During my study abroad, I did almost all my course work at the University of Bologna. Getting to know a different university setting and having a direct comparison made me appreciate Wellesley so much more. In Bologna, I also started a research project that became my senior honors thesis at the history department in Wellesley. Today, that research project has developed into my PhD dissertation project.