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Outlook

Lauren Tindal, Bocconi Exchance, Fall 2012

We were at Lake Como, a day trip for all the exchange students, sitting around under the umbrellas of yet another panini restaurant. Talks of majors, business school (Bocconi is mostly economics/business), and future plans came up.

“You Americans, you really do believe in the American dream,” said a girl from Hungary. “Here we are too pessimistic about our futures. You guys do dare to dream.”

It kind of sounds like I made this conversation up, but it was all too real. One of the most pronounced differences in Italian/European culture and American culture is our outlook on life. Italians are all for the short term; they live robustly, with vitality, indulging in the moment with drinks and apiritivos, sipping espressos and pastries, unconcerned about time and efficiency. Americans are the opposite. We fill our calendars with more events and activities than we can manage, discuss our daily stressors like trophies, and constantly look ahead to what’s coming next. It’s not that we cannot relax, but rather that, to relax, we have to feel we’ve accomplished something first. That’s not really an issue for Italians.

Despite the positives and negatives of both outlooks, this conversation made me realize how central American culture is to who I am. While I am in full support of all-you-can eat buffets by a pretty canal, it is also integral to my identity to believe in the idea that I can do anything I put my mind to. In a general sense, almost all Americans believe that if we work hard enough and fall into the right circumstances, we can achieve whatever we want to. In Europe it seems that’s not the case. The graduate students I’ve met here seem to be almost floating; they don’t seem to have a real idea of what they want to do with their lives, and most of them are at least 4 years older than me. There’s definitely a reason we call it the “American” dream rather than the “World” dream, good or bad.

The pictures that I’m including in this post are not those of the Duomo, the city center, or the castle this time. While those are of course, central to Milan’s identity as a city, they are not the whole story. Milan is bustling and lively, but an Italian city that seems to be struggling to adapt to the efficiency of modern times. Graffiti covers almost every park bench, wall, and subway train, almost visually illustrating the dissonance between the economic crisis here and a longtime culture of smelling the roses.

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Next post: All about travels! Pictures of Lake Como, Cinque Terre, Oktoberfest & London (this weekend!) to come.

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