Hello everyone! I’m Federica from group 18 “Longlife Learning” and I would like to share with you my feelings and thoughts about this project.

When I first signed up for this Virtual Ryugaku I honestly wasn’t quite sure what to expect in the first place; I knew that it mainly targeted students who didn’t have the opportunity to study abroad due to the coronavirus pandemic but it wasn’t clear to me exactly how it was going to be. So, right after I finished my interview in Japanese I started worrying that my Japanese language skills weren’t good enough to communicate effectively with the other students. In fact, I even found the project explanation Zoom call in Japanese challenging, I’m not going to lie.

However, I was never alone. Every time I felt a bit lost in the information, especially during the first week or two of the project, I could always count on my group teammates and fellow project members. And that is something I realized when I took the time to focus on what I was learning from this internship. I really discovered what collaborating towards a common goal meant and it felt empowering to me. Even though sometimes it felt overwhelming, I knew that I was doing an effort for a project that I was sure was worth it and one of a kind. Working every day to make sure that the experience could go as smoothly as possible for all members became something I genuinely felt passionate about.

I am one of the students that was supposed to study in Japan and unfortunately couldn’t, however I can say that thanks to the Virtual Ryugaku I got anyway one of the most rewarding feeling that a study abroad experience can give you, the “Exchange”. In times like these were even spending time with you closest friend is difficult and doesn’t feel spontaneous, to have the chance of talking of such broad topics was kind of a blessing. To have a weekly meeting with your teammates, to be sure that everyone will be there as eager as you are to learn something new, to listen to each other’s opinion was a privilege that I didn’t think I would get in my last semester of university.

It hasn’t always been easy, of course. Sometimes the language barrier felt impossible to climb and I think that you could feel the struggle of not being able to communicate what you were actually thinking in your head. But that never became an ending point. Instead, everyone really tried their best to find other ways to phrase their thoughts or, vice versa, gave the other all the time to look for a word in the dictionary or to remember what was the correct verb tense they wanted to use. The friendly environment that grew slowly during the weeks really made everyone at ease, creating engaging discussions in every occasion, whether it was during a 自由会話 or during our weekly Zoom calls. Therefore, although there were clear differences in everyone’s language level this didn’t stop anyone to express their opinions.

Lastly, I would like to express how much I enjoyed reading the blog. It wasn’t just a way to show what each and every group had done that week but also a true learning opportunity. Our topics could be sometimes really, really hard; but because everyone cared so much about making sure we could all understand what they had talked about that week, the posts were always really good and enjoyable, regardless of our own Japanese levels. I took an interest in things that never really caught my attention before and found that my main topic, Lifelong Learning, was actually linked to so many of these.

In conclusion, it has been a really challenging but fun and rich experience, which I am really glad I was part of. 

本当にありがとうございました！

Photo by Courtney Hedger on Unsplash