One of the biggest challenges here at CIMBA is balancing school life with fun and travel. People travel basically every weekend or if people stay in PDG (Paderno del Grappa) they travel to local towns nearby. You will not do homework on the weekends! Do not think that you will, if anything the most I have done on the weekends is during the train ride to wherever we decided to go.
A huge plus of studying in PDG is that it is such a small town compared to Milan, Rome, or Florence that you aren’t tempted to go out during the week and spend extra money. For example, the only places to go out to in Paderno is either the sports bar/café or the pizzeria. This makes CIMBA a better learning environment for focusing on school during the week.
Something really amazing is that the class sizes are probably the smallest you will ever experience in college, besides when or if you have a very narrow specialization in your major. My smallest class is seven people and the largest is maybe fifteen students. This makes learning here a once in a lifetime experience. It’s so easy to meet with professors one on one and you will know everyone. This is something that I really enjoy because one thing I hated about college is that everything was so impersonal, and it was rare to actually make a friend in a class. Also, I love getting extra help for classes like accounting. Being able to easily set up a one on one with my professor has been extremely helpful.
To give some perspective on how the classes are, something I had to get used is the two-hour classes. It definitely is challenging to sit through that long of a class if you have three or more classes in a day. However, in exchange we start later than average and end almost a month earlier than everyone else, which in my opinion is pretty awesome. In most classes here, the only grades you get are either exams or quizzes plus the occasional project. There are also more presentations, which isn’t something to be afraid of because of the small class sizes and all the ones I have done have been with a group. Additionally, just like at my home university some of the professors’ grade “nice” and some are harsh, it’s just a matter of what classes you take.
My favorite classes are Managerial Accounting and “Italy LIVE!”. I am going to major in accounting, so that explains my love for the class. Also, it’s more activity based, and the professor takes us to cafes during class which makes it fun, instead of another lecture. I highly recommend the Italy LIVE! class for everyone. You mostly learn Italian set up like any other language class, but also you get to take fun field trips. You will actually use the Italian you learn and the professoressa will give you all the phrases you need to survive your travels.
I want to explain the blocks because it’s a lot different than the U.S. There are four blocks everyday: 8:45 to 10:35, 10:50 to 12:40, 1:45 to 3:35 and lastly I think it’s 3:40 to 5:30. You will have A days and B days: M,W,F and T, TR. They will switch halfway through. It’s nice because for me I have three classes M,W,F, but after the travel week (the half way mark) I will have only three classes on two days instead. I wouldn’t recommend taking the last block at all just because for traveling on Fridays you can leave early or have more time to pack if you don’t have the 3:40 to 5:30 class.
Note: I don’t have any more on-campus pictures, so here are some from my latest and greatest adventures in Prague and Asolo, a medieval town near Paderno del Grappa!