My Dream Summer Abroad (by Janice Ellar)
Incredible. Amazing. Unforgettable. These are but a fraction of the expressive words I could use to describe my summer internship abroad. I could enumerate them here, but I won’t bore you with my mastery of adjectives. Rather, I’ll thrill you with the exciting story of my summer. It was a summer so fascinating and awe-inspiring that there is no way yours could ever top it; so don’t even think about trying to, you little shit. After a week’s visit at home, I traveled to the spectacular city of Florence, Italy, where I spent the next 8 weeks interning at a news agency. I met inspiring people from all walks of life while at my job, and it had a more lasting impact on me than any job that you could ever hope to hold in your wildest dreams. It certainly beats the pants off of that sorry finance position you held at your uncle’s non-profit this summer, so quit trying to play up your accomplishments and accept that, compared to me, you are nothing but a tiny grain of sand about to be blown away by the wind at any minute.
Of course, the trip provided its own fair share of obstacles. Learning the Italian language took long hours of dedication and practice, and social interactions that are routine at home were at first quite stressful abroad. After some time though, I became quite proficient in the language, certainly more proficient than you could ever hope to be even after multiple lifetimes of living and working in the country. I was fully immersed in a language and culture that offered such striking beauty that for you to experience it would cause certain death.
My host family was absolutely amazing as well. They taught me things that, though incredibly rewarding for me, would force you to collapse to your knees, as all the walls in the supposedly secure world crumbled around you. If you even learned a tenth of what my host family taught me, you would feel your limbs retracting into your body while your organs slowly slithered out of your throat and onto the ground in front of you.
Eventually, the time came to return to Evanston. Coming back was bittersweet, but I was filled with excitement about the prospect of sharing what little of my experiences my friends could hear without involuntarily spooning out their own eyeballs for fear of what lay ahead. None of you could ever be blessed with even one-thousandth of the emotional intelligence that I gained from this trip. For I have seen the true path to love, am now ascending beyond the world of sentient beings into the realm of omnipotence. I leave you weaklings now to wallow in your world of i-banking internships and second-rate research opportunities. I’m on the other side now.
