I took two classes while abroad in Europe: one taught by Dr. Lemly, the other by life itself. The one that Dr. Lemly taught was entitled “The Rhetoric of Public Memory,” and what my three classmates and I did was study how the public in different countries, starting with the United States, remembered and portrayed historical events. We visited a stunning amount of museums and memorials in 4 countries, including England and Scotland as official class visits, Italy and France as the countries we visited outside of class. We analyzed nearly every museum in how it portrayed significant happenings from the past and how it could be perceived by the masses. Each museum had a different style to it, with some being more inviting, others less organized, and all of them unique. In addition, we examined the gift shops connected to the museums, if they had one, and what it said about the museum’s intentions for its “audience.” At the end of the class, on one of our last days in Oxford, each of us four students presented a museum or memorial proposal for an event or historical figure of our choice that we thought would be worthy of being remembered. Applying what we learned in class and seen on our outings, we created and presented a visual representation to our class over dinner in the main lobby the night before we left.
However, as I stated at the beginning, this was not the only “class” I attended while abroad. Through traveling to different cities and countries, I learned a great deal about myself. Never have I felt more tired, hungry, and confused as times on this trip. Traveling over 30 hours in one set of clothes with six others (and pajamas, toiletries, and shoes) on my back to get to Uig, Scotland, was one of the greatest tests of my strength I have had to go through. I am proud of myself for having done so without getting into a fight with one of the people in our class, though I have to say a great deal of it had to do with the positive spirit Dr. Lemly had throughout. We also all knew that we were going through it together so that no one could complain more than the other. The only thing we could do was support one another and laugh at the crazy blessings we were given. I also learned so much about how to travel and communicate with others when two of my classmates, one person from the English department who was there at the same time we were, and I went to three cities in Italy and one in France in about five days. Most notably, I learned that it is not a good idea to visit more than one country in 5 days when no one in the group has done it before. That being said, I thoroughly enjoyed it and wouldn’t change (most of) my experiences for the world because I was taught so much that cannot be acquired through textbooks and lectures. I learned how to support and rely on others, communicate when I needed something, admit when I didn’t understand, and be brave when time demanded it. I learned to pack light, buy cheap, be on time, ask for directions and rely on Google translate because my life depended on it. All I hope for now is that it sticks with me for the rest of my life because I do not want to forget any of it…which explains why I took over 4,000 pictures!
