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Italy Here I Come

Take the First Step

Like many students at Villanova, studying abroad is on the bucket list for my college experience. Fortunately, with the resources offered at Villanova, studying abroad not only adds to my college experience, but my professional development as well. In my search for more information on studying abroad, I attended a First Step Information Session. Here, I met with Kyle Pace, an advisor at the Office of Education Abroad. Mr. Pace briefly summarized what studying abroad consisted of and went over the simple requirements I would need to fulfill before I could be considered for any study abroad programs. We discussed the reasons why I am interested in studying abroad, which was beneficial to me as it inspired me to reflect on why studying abroad is important to me. I was thrilled to hear Mr. Pace’s responses to my reasons for wanting to study abroad. He not only assured me that the experience would fulfill my desires, but added that the trip could potentially give me ten fold the benefits that I sought. 

To conclude our meeting, Mr. Pace and I spoke about the program that compels me the most: the Business and Culture section of the Italian Context program. I learned that the trip takes place in the second semester of sophomore year and the only academic requirement to participate in the program is the maintenance of a grade point average above 2.75. This excited me because I knew that by that time, I would have gotten fully acclimated to Villanova and will therefore be comfortable with leaving for a full semester. I expressed my excitement to Mr. Pace who assured me that I would not lose my sense of comfort at the university during my time away. 

As you can likely already gather, Mr. Pace is caring, supportive, and clearly wants to make the experience of studying abroad as enjoyable as possible. In addition to being unceasingly honest in his advising, he made the meeting about studying abroad very brief and kept things simple (which I appreciated). For these reasons, I highly recommend making an appointment with Mr. Pace and  attending the First Step Information Session.

https://www1.villanova.edu/villanova/provost/abroad/process/firststep.html

Introduce Yourself (Example Post)

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

  • Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
  • Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

  • Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
  • What topics do you think you’ll write about?
  • Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
  • If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.

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