Obsessing over the Slutsky equation. The conjugation of the Italian subjective form. Nationalism in post-unification Italy. The mid-term in Macro. The hundreds of copies needed for IR, Conflict Management, Economies of Latin America. The next journal or Spanish club meeting. The internship search. As students, the significant amount of tasks we juggle daily can muddle the mind.

Did someone mention a social forum in Florence? Were there really over a million people there and weren't we only an hour away? What degree am I pursuing again?

Why didn't our esteemed university do more to make us aware of this forum? Why didn't we do it ourselves? Where were my development-minded colleagues, my nascent revolutionaries?

During these first few months, the information flows seem narrow and moving in one direction. We are studying International Relations. How the world works. And there's plenty going on that is passing us by. I (embarrassingly admit that I) haven't read the newspaper regularly since the warm August days when I arrived. And I'm a journalist.

A former Bologna Center student wrote in a past student-created newsletter that the opportunity cost of better grades was less creativity. Admittedly, we need the grade. And granted, electing to become a student implies taking a two-year hiatus from actively participating in the workforce to better ourselves for the future. Micro and Macro and Theories of This and That are to establish a concrete theoretical foundation. But graduate school should be one big seminar. A large discussion forum. We need to apply this knowledge. Information inflows and outflows. Long hours in cafés, arguing over massive amounts of wine. Inflammatory speakers sparking heated post-lecture debates.

I have been a participant in a few of these debates. But we need more. The Bologna Center Journal proposes this Web site as an informal forum to trade ideas, to hear not only from our professors and the high-profile lecturers that grace our campus, but also from each other. Why? Because more discussion leads to more learning, more balanced views, more thoughtful analysis. Our classmates have many diverse backgrounds and experiences to enlighten us much as any expert in the field.

The Journal is only one effort to do this. The newspaper club, launched by Jen Linker and Professor Jones aims toward the same goal. As do the efforts of those who started the Middle East club.

There are many others with impassioned, contrary, unique and/or disgruntled views. This is your forum to question your colleagues and to challenge your professors. Let's not get so wrapped up in regurgitating information that we stop trying to think about it.

Caryn Nesmith
Editor-in Chief