Life as the student, not the teacher

It's been a rough week. Nothing they tell you about the interdisciplinary nature and intense pace can prepare you for a week like this one - it was just our luck that it happened to be our second week in Italy.

Let me just say that I have so much more empathy for my students now that I'm settling into the academic life yet again. Six hours of lecture every day is actually a long time to stay still and be actively learning. Even though we have a beautiful location to learn in . . .

And the courses are phenomenal. Any professor who can spend 6 hours daily for 2 straight days fleshing out contemporary food systems, environmental issues and sustainability and make it engaging is worth his weight in gold. The discussions were stimulating and the material riveting and controversial.

But cramming material that could realistically take up an entire term into two days, and then putting together presentations and writing an in-class exam connecting all the material the day after, is overwhelming. It's going to be an adjustment to be bombarded with so much information without time to really process it all before being evaluated. I'm learning that's the beauty and the frustration of this program: the opportunity to be completely immersed in all the elements of gastronomy, but at the same time having to be patient and allow all the material time to sink in, even when it's past the point of actual assessment.

Needless to say, there was an almost giddy lightness of spirit as we burst out of the classroom. So how did my apartment choose to celebrate? By making dinner, of course. Fresh fish fillets with lemon and herbs over a sweet chicory salad tossed with grapefruit, and asparagus topped with pancetta and poached eggs with farm-fresh orange yolks.

The lovely Arneis we bought last weekend in Cheraso was the perfect accompaniment while we talked over food, travel and our histories for almost three hours. Dessert was a local cheese and some Kiwi golds, and we watched the sunset from our terrace with much lighter hearts.

Yes, we have 300 pages to read by Monday, but it's almost the weekend. And this weekend holds the prospect of the Saturday morning market in Torino, one of the largest in Northern Italy, and home of the infamous Bike Market . . .