A month has already passed since the end of the project and I still find myself thinking about it everyday, elaborating pieces of it I didn’t consider before, or hadn’t fully understood yet. In particular lately my thoughts have been lingering on the significance and dynamics of dialoguing, which most times I take for granted. Indeed, one of the things that stood out the most to me was the excitement mixed to a sense of (mostly) positive fatigue that I noticed the students were feeling during the different stages of the project. Especially in these times in which we got so used to listen to our own voices that we tend to forget how talking with someone -actively and intently- feels like, having to think and to give shape to those thoughts who were then going to be listened by someone who was going through those same processes, somehow reestablishes and reminds us of our humanity. Why did I choose to talk about certain aspects of a theme? Why did I feel that way when I heard those words? Who am I now in this moment and who will I be from now on? These are not easy questions, as it is never easy to question our identity and our place in the world, but nevertheless I like to think that these questions accompanied both the students and my colleagues during this journey of learning and self-discovery as much as they did with me. This is why, if I had to speak about the role I felt I had in this project, despite officially being that of “junior coordinator” and so taking care of those that were my “duties”, most times I felt more as an active observer, always on the look for something new I could metaphorically chew on, adding it to my mental library of elements that would help me figure out the world I am living in and myself. Having access to what was happening “behind the scenes”, such as the weekly meetings I had with the 責任者 of the groups I coordinated and those with my colleagues, as well as to what happened during the 自由会話 classes, allowed me to confront myself with topics and points of discussions I would have not consider on my own, or at least not in the way I did. This is why the feeling I still feel the most when looking back at this experience is gratitude towards all those who made it possible by coming to class and participating to meetings, by doing research, by preparing documents full of new words and concepts, by carrying on conversations, by making sure that everything worked correctly and by challenging themselves, until the very end. I hope that these two months left you with the need and the desire to understand and to be an awarely active part of the situations and dynamics of the world we are all a part of, starting from initiating this same kind of dialogues even out of the classroom. 

Wishing you the best and hoping to see you all soon, I thank you all once again.

Gaia Varone