My immersive experience
Anne Irving, University of Surrey  
 
The context/situation/challenge
I think the most profound immersive experience of my life that meant I learnt something to the extent that it changed me, was when I left the UK for Italy. I was 18, not a very confident or happy person, I went alone, I knew no one there, could not speak a word of Italian and only had enough money to afford a one way ticket.
 
The particular characteristics of the situation that engaged me in an immersive way.
Being alone therefore having to work everything out for myself. It forced me to engage with people from backgrounds that I would not have been exposed to in the UK.
 
Being young and inexperienced, I was open (probably much too open) to anything that came along.
 
Being unhappy, I had nowhere to go but to a better place, so I was fiercely positive and embraced the experience as nothing that would happen to me could possibly be worse than what had happened before.
 
Being without means to live meant I had to work, even though the only work I could find proved to be utterly alien to my character. I had no escape route, no family to fall back on at home.
 
Being unable to communicate meant I had to learn Italian very fast.
 
In short, the characteristics of the situation took me way out of my comfort zone and gave me no safety net.
 
What forms of learning / personal development / change emerged from the situation?
I learnt Italian and was fluent in 6 months. I learnt that communication relies as much on words as on feelings and that both are important and often contradictory. I learnt how to separate these two messages. I learnt how to trust and who to trust (this took a very long time!) and to do this I had to work out what my feelings meant and whether they were trustworthy.
 
I learnt that the British approach to life wasn’t the only way, so I learnt how to unlearn. I figured out which parts of my Britishness I wanted to hold on to and which were better discarded. I found out what was really important to me and treasured values like kindness, cheerfulness and courage that go beyond culture.
 
I experienced the typical cycle of living abroad, the honeymoon period, then the irritation at all the differences, and finally I acquired enough resilience to not run away again.
 
I changed from being a lone, angry rebel to realising that sustaining negativity is a waste of effort and time and that this was better spent finding connections and commonality. I found that shared feelings and experiences were a better basis for establishing lasting common ground than shared opinions. I learnt how to build relationships and when to choose not to.
 
What words/concepts/feelings would you use to describe the immersive experience?
It stripped me bare, stretched and tested me and helped me see who I was and what really mattered to me. I was forced to exist out of my comfort zone, and to find common ground with people I would previously have chosen to avoid.
 
What principles or lessons can be drawn from this story?  
That being young and open deepens the experience, so 18-21 seems a good age (but I’d like to know if there’s evidence of a relationship between age and ability to change).
 
It takes time (again I’d like to see if there’s any evidence of what is achievable over different time periods).
 
If you want to learn about yourself and find your limits, then you need to do it alone. Scary but worthwhile, so students will need to be made aware of what to expect and be given support remotely that can help them work through the rough edges and discomfort and to work out what their discomfort is telling them about themselves. The skill of private and collaborative reflection.
 
There is a question of how much support we provide if a student is to learn a degree of resilience and self-reliance. Enabling a student to give up too soon or stepping in to sort out problems with employers for them can leave them with regrets or a sense of failure, so we owe it to them to understand e.g. when a desire to leave an experience is legitimate or merely a sign of the necessary discomfort that’s part of coping with real life. The key question is what can they learn from it and is it worth the time they’re giving it?
 
The other interesting question is of formal v. informal learning. Song lyrics, a book of grammar exercises, watching Italian soap operas and talking to friends worked best for me. After living and working in Italy for 15 years, I only ever had to write occasional letters and fill out forms, yet in school and HE we assess language learning through essays, written assignments and oral presentations. Do we give our students a chance to find out which way of learning and being assessed works for them? Assessed tasks should never require a student to take time away from learning in order to complete the task, but they often do.
 
 
 
 
 

 


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