Taking Italian at Wake?

willmingtonwave
Sun, 27 Jun 2010 21:26:26 +0000

I took Italian and honestly regret it. The only reason I took it was to go to Casa Artom*, but for the last few semesters they have loosened up the requirements and Italian is not necessary to study in Venice.

Unless you really want to study Italian or have a specific reason to do so (ie: graduate work, pursuing a Fulbright in Italy, business in Italy, etc.) I would recommend doing Spanish, Mandarin, or Arabic. Honestly as someone who just entered the “professional” world, Italian is largely not very useful. Besides Italy and Switzerland, no notable** country has it as an official language.

Lastly, the Italian program at Wake Forest in my experience was just uneven. It was either insanely hard (in which a quarter of my class had Ds and Fs and one girl made a B I believe) or very easy. However, in the latter instance our class did not learn much.

If your goal is to go to Italy or Venice, you probably do not need to take Italian. Syracuse and NYU have programs in Florence which do not require previous knowledge. And as I mentioned before, as of late, Casa Artom has not either.

Take a long hard look at what you want to get out of Italian. Unless you are wed to taking the language I would suggest going a more practical route.

*I wound up not going to Venice. Got mono, got violently ill, missed my semester, etc. etc. etc. so I am kind of still sad about that. I will never have that opportunity again, but I digress.

**Technically San Marino, parts of Slovenia and a few others have it as their “official” language.