When Discomfort Becomes Your Greatest Teacher
ISI Florence Alumni Tell Us Their Lasting Impacts of Study Abroad
Packing lists get checked off. Visas get filed. Flights get booked. And then students land in Florence or Perugia and discover that nothing on the checklist prepared them for what actually happens next. This article, written by ISI Florence Student Services staff member Claire Chisholm, gathers alumni voices from across more than a decade of ISI Florence and Umbra Institute programming to trace a consistent pattern: the discomfort of studying abroad does not just build character, it redirects lives.
From Low-Context to High-Context: The Academic Shift
American university students arrive having been trained in low-context academic environments where expectations are spelled out, feedback is direct, and success is measured against clear rubrics. ISI Florence and Umbra Institute operate differently. Meaning is implied. Guidance is earned through observation and interpretation rather than handed over by instruction.
Architecture students feel this most acutely. Alex Hall (Spring 2019) described studio culture in Florence as “untainted by textbook jargon,” freeing students to develop their own analytical voices. Five of the six award winners in a University of Maryland Senior Intra-Studio Design Competition following the Spring 2019 semester credited their interpretive skills directly to time spent in Florence. Alicia Moreira (Spring 2018), now an architectural designer and educator at California College of the Arts, frames her entire professional identity around learning to seek out discomfort rather than avoid it, a habit she first developed during her semester abroad.
The shift is not limited to studio disciplines. Elsa Vellone (Spring 2023), an International Relations major, found that her high-context shift happened not in how her classes were structured but in what they forced her to question about assumptions she had carried through the American education system without ever examining them.
Skills That Follow Students Into Careers
The traits built abroad do not stay in Italy. Adaptability, cross-cultural communication, and the confidence to operate in ambiguous environments are exactly what employers look for, and study abroad alumni consistently demonstrate them. According to the IES Recent Graduates Survey, 94% of students who studied abroad reported that their experience helped them build skills needed for their first job.
Ben Ripley (Spring 2019) traces his ability to communicate design ideas clearly to the collaborative studio model in Florence. Carla Hill Galfano (2005) found that intercultural frameworks she built in Florence resurfaced constantly years later during her business career in northern Italy. Jessica Paholsky, an Umbra Institute alumna from Spring 2012, arrived as a shy Fine Arts and Journalism student and left with a love of food history and documentary filmmaking. She has since published a cookbook, Once Upon a Pesto, which she describes as a direct result of her History of Italian Food class in Perugia.
Research supports what these stories illustrate: 34% of study abroad alumni credit their experience with determining their career direction entirely, and 84% of those working in internationally oriented fields trace that path directly to time spent abroad.
The Experience Does Not End at the Semester
Dominique Brigham (2011-2012) returned to intern with ISI Florence, then moved to Spain to teach English, then completed a Master’s degree in Amsterdam. Elsa Vellone, after her semester in Florence, is now producing a documentary series about Italian culture and pursuing a Master’s in international public policy. For both, the semester abroad was not a detour. It was the start of the main road.
As Elsa put it, studying abroad is not about traveling. It is about making a conscious effort to integrate into a new culture, and that effort, done seriously, fundamentally reshapes how students understand their place in the world.
