53 ARCA – Reservations
To give a balanced assessment of ARCA I would like to share with you two minor disappointments I experienced with the school. I certainly can’t blame it for the first one, which is more a product of the student body or me, or both of us. The first disappointment is the feeling of isolation I experienced over the four weeks. The second was the disappointment I felt with my first day of what was meant to be the start of a four-week course.
At all the other schools I attended, I never felt out of place despite being so much older than the other students. They ranged from 19 and up, but no matter their age, most were “open” to meeting and sharing with others. It is really not a matter of age but of maturity. I never felt an age difference, and we often joined in non-school activities. Not so at ARCA. I did not make any friends of whatever age. It could have been because in my class I was the only new student in a group that had known each other for a long time. Nor was there anyone else outside of my class with whom I could share activities. My compensation was that Bologna had a lot to offer in terms of free museums and concerts, and I had a very fine landlady with whom I held long conversations. But I was very happy when in my fifth and last week at Bologna my friends came to visit me.
This sense of isolation is not a fault of the school. It has no control over its student body, and being a small school, it has a limited spectrum of people. You will probably encounter a different set of students when you attend. Or, you may not care, especially if you are attending for a shorter period, or you may like being alone. Of course, if you are younger you won’t experience, I hope, the isolation I had felt.
My second reservation has more substance. When I signed up for the 4-week course I expected that the course would have a start date and an end date. It certainly had those in the on-line calendar. In fact, these dates seemed to have no significance, at least from the student’s perspective. It seems one can join in at any time, stay as long as one wants, and leave. I found the same problem at all the commercial schools I attended in Italy. For more honest advertising the schools should inform potential students that there is no start or finish and perhaps indicate what will probably be taught in any given week.
Perhaps because there was no true start date to the course, ARCA had no welcoming reception. ARCA does not need a reception in the form of a social gathering because it is small enough that new students can be introduced to those already attending at the long coffee break or pausa. But the school should have a welcoming procedure for all new students and it should introduce the administration and most of the established instructors. It should not rely on any one instructor but should be a policy of the school. The purpose of this reception is to give an introduction to ARCA, Bologna, and more importantly, to such important information as telephone numbers for police, hospital, and immigration. Ideally, it would also contain a current list of recommended eating-places.
In my next blog I will describe how I arrived at selecting ARCA.
At all the other schools I attended, I never felt out of place despite being so much older than the other students. They ranged from 19 and up, but no matter their age, most were “open” to meeting and sharing with others. It is really not a matter of age but of maturity. I never felt an age difference, and we often joined in non-school activities. Not so at ARCA. I did not make any friends of whatever age. It could have been because in my class I was the only new student in a group that had known each other for a long time. Nor was there anyone else outside of my class with whom I could share activities. My compensation was that Bologna had a lot to offer in terms of free museums and concerts, and I had a very fine landlady with whom I held long conversations. But I was very happy when in my fifth and last week at Bologna my friends came to visit me.
This sense of isolation is not a fault of the school. It has no control over its student body, and being a small school, it has a limited spectrum of people. You will probably encounter a different set of students when you attend. Or, you may not care, especially if you are attending for a shorter period, or you may like being alone. Of course, if you are younger you won’t experience, I hope, the isolation I had felt.
My second reservation has more substance. When I signed up for the 4-week course I expected that the course would have a start date and an end date. It certainly had those in the on-line calendar. In fact, these dates seemed to have no significance, at least from the student’s perspective. It seems one can join in at any time, stay as long as one wants, and leave. I found the same problem at all the commercial schools I attended in Italy. For more honest advertising the schools should inform potential students that there is no start or finish and perhaps indicate what will probably be taught in any given week.
Perhaps because there was no true start date to the course, ARCA had no welcoming reception. ARCA does not need a reception in the form of a social gathering because it is small enough that new students can be introduced to those already attending at the long coffee break or pausa. But the school should have a welcoming procedure for all new students and it should introduce the administration and most of the established instructors. It should not rely on any one instructor but should be a policy of the school. The purpose of this reception is to give an introduction to ARCA, Bologna, and more importantly, to such important information as telephone numbers for police, hospital, and immigration. Ideally, it would also contain a current list of recommended eating-places.
In my next blog I will describe how I arrived at selecting ARCA.
posted by Toby1939 at 4:07 PM
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