How To Choose Your Courses

Coming into Santa Clara University, I had no idea I would leave with a double minor, the second having been international business. I thought I had everything figured out with my practical choice of finance major and more passionate selection creative writing minor. However, upon mapping out my required courses, I found that I was still on track to graduate two quarters early, even with my intention to study abroad. Thinking it forbidden to graduate any more than a quarter early (which it’s not), I decided to take on another area of study.

Since becoming a double major would force me to either overload indefinitely or graduate up to a year later, I knew an additional minor was the way to go. I looked into the business school first, and happened upon the International Business minor, which instantly caught my attention. Not only did it correlate with my then-current coursework in the business school, but it also encouraged my pursuit of a semester abroad and offered classes that I actually really wanted to take, all of which would still allow me to graduate a single quarter early. That is, until I arrived for orientation in Milan, Italy for the start of my junior year.

Knowing that I wanted to study abroad in Italy, Milan was the obvious choice, as it was the recommended location for finance majors and remains known for its fashion and automotive influences, which are two key interests of mine. Everything seemed perfect: I got two classes approved to transfer over from the partner university, l’Università Bocconi, and was able to visit my family in Sicily for a month before leaving to attend the complete Formula 1 race weekend in Monza. But then I received my schedule at orientation the next day. 

Since taking an Italian language course was required by the program, its scheduling took priority over my selected Bocconi courses. Not only did my Italian course conflict with the times offered for both the Bocconi classes, but it was only equivalent to SCU’s ITAL 21, and the 100 language course is required for IB minors. At that point, I had less than two days before the start of the alternate Bocconi course to rework my schedule by attempting to contact SCU faculty members (who still had three weeks before the start of the quarter) for course approval and see if I could be moved up to the ITAL 100 equivalent.

It was clear that I was placed in the lower advanced Italian course because the determining assessment was mostly based on grammar and writing, my two greatest faults in Italian, as I learned solely from speaking at home, and mainly a dialectical Sicilian as opposed to the traditional Italian. Still, after speaking with the staff (in Italian), I was offered the ability to move up to the most advanced course, but was warned that the grammar I’d be taught would be exceedingly difficult. In the end, I decided to keep my current course allocation, wanting to learn proper Italian grammar and writing, and knowing that the opportunity to take any course at la Bocconi was too good to pass up, whether it be approved for a like course transfer or not (and it eventually wasn’t). It all worked out for the best, though, as I was able to continue my study of Italian grammar and writing through the end of my junior year, in order to pass that 100 requirement, as well as intern for Fashion Technology Accelerator. Sure, it meant I would be pushed back another quarter for graduation, but I was in no rush to graduate any sooner than on time. Even better, this experience inspired me to apply for a Global Fellows internship that following summer in Kolkata, India with Destiny Reflection, which you can read all about here.