By oncptime
I met Fabio back in August just a few days after I first came to Florence. I didn’t speak much Italian. He told me it didn’t matter and that he spoke English just fine. He’d known Americans before, he said. He liked them. I was impressed He was young—maybe in his early 30s or so, and from Rome.
“I’m a Ph.D. student,” He explained that first afternoon in that hot, stuffy room. “Intercultural communication.”
Something about the way he said the word intercultural set my teeth on edge. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it—his accent, his pronunciation—he was practically playing with the word as he spoke.
I’ve met with him twice a week every week since then. He’s taught me things. He’s my professor. I ’m having an NSA relationship with my Italian professor, and frankly? I’m over it.
I was enamored with Fabio in those first few moments of our torrid affair lecture. And who wouldn’t be? There I was, sitting in a historical landmark building dating back to the Renaissance listening to a grandiose introductory lecture about what lay it store for me that semester. We were going to “explore the intricacies of intercultural communication,” Fabio and I. Together we would “embark on a journey towards global citizenship, delving into the sociological DNA of various societies to discern a way to share ideas and information effectively.” We would “trek through the intellectual forests and navigate the rushing linguistic rivers of—“ugh, I can’t write this.
How to put this gently? Fabio was a garrulous man. He loved to lecture exhaustively and as excited as I initially was at the prospect of studying with him for a semester, the rose colored glasses were quick to slide off.
Each class began with a long, drawn out introduction to the day’s lesson and its nebulous theme—“The Tree of Culture,” or “The Effect of Modern Communication.” I’d sit there in anticipation, waiting for the introduction to wind to a close for the lecture and subsequent discussion to begin. Minutes would slip by and the explanatory opening statement would continue and I found myself wondering “…when…when is the lesson going to begin?” Inevitably, just as it sounded as if something that might be on a quiz or midterm found its way into Fabio’s speech, he would glance at his watch and proclaim that class was over. I was dumbfounded.
The first few classes, I chocked the odd teaching style to our lack of literary materials. At the end of our first class Fabio explained that we would be provided with readers containing all of the semester’s texts. The readers came. The introductions continues. Days turned into weeks and the class discussions still never came.
I began to see that Fabio’s teaching style was just that—style, with very little substance beneath it. For reasons unclear to me, he refused to delve in to topics past their glitzy, glossy academic surface. Perhaps he doubted our abilities to have intellectual conversations. Perhaps he just didn’t have anything to say to us (doubtful). Maybe that was just the way Italian professors taught—I never really found out. I came to realize that learning with Fabio was a lot like being in a long term, NSA relationship.
Twice a week. He makes noise. I wait for it to be over. Neither of us really gets much out of our time together. Yet for some reason we just keep coming back for more.