“Over the break I found myself with a lot more free time on my hands than I had previous years. I decided to take advantage of the opportunity and start learning a new language. I had been wanting to learn to speak Italian for years, but decided that it wouldn’t help me later in life since I wasn’t sure I’d ever actually go to Italy again on my own. Since I want to become an English language teacher in South Korea, I figured now would be the perfect time to focus on learning the beginning basics of the language. I learned surprisingly quicker than I originally thought I would be able to. After studying the alphabet the first night of the break, I was able to slowly but surely read. I found that learning to read first before trying to learn conversational phrases was ideal because I was able to pronounce them a lot easier than saying [it out loud].”