During my first lecture at the University of Bologna, I sat in the stairwell, crushed between my bag and another Italian girl who hadn’t managed to find a seat. When the professor started talking, all I caught was, “Cos’e’ la letteratura?” (What is literature?)

The next two hours consisted of a lecture conducted in a language I’m supposed to know or at least be learning. The professor ended it with a slam of a book and a swing of his scarf. I turned to the girl next to me, stumbling to ask her in Italian what he had just said.

And so it began. The pile of confusion, incorrect translations, and “Itaglish” notes that would characterize my very first semester at this Italian institution.

Bologna, my home for the 2011-2012 academic year, has three nicknames: La Rossa, the red one, for it’s red-tinted buildings and communist political history; La Grassa, the fat one, for its world famous cuisine; and La Dotta, the learned one, for what is currently my university and the oldest university in Europe. The University of Bologna.

Since the university was founded in 1088, scholars such as Dante, Petrarch, and Copernicus flocked to study in the same buildings where I have lectures. But the age of an institution doesn’t necessarily equal perfection. In fact, after a semester of untangling the Italian education system, I have found that “education” has many different interpretations. And Italians don’t necessarily see organization as part of their definition.

It is normal for there not to be enough seats in a classroom. I’ve sat on the floor, and sometimes I share a seat with a friend. I’ve shown up for lecture only to find my building locked or my professor an hour late.

There is no such thing as an attendance policy. I could never attend class, enroll for my oral exam, and take it studying completely on my own or maybe not at all. If I fail, exams can be retaken a month, two months, even 10 years after I’ve completed the course.

And yet, despite its clear lack of order and maybe even functionality, the Italian system excels in other ways. The lack of attendance and enrollment reflect the fact that there is no cap on how many students can attend a lecture. In fact, courses are open to the public. I could sit in on any lecture I wanted to without paying a penny as long as I didn’t enroll for the exam.

Italians pay around $1500 a year to actually receive a degree from the University. But, their cheap education comes at a cost. There’s no Student Health Center. No on-campus living. There are no athletic teams or campus newspapers. The students are there to learn, and no one holds their hands through it.

I have come to realize how dependent I am on the rigid semester schedule I have back home: Test 1, Mid-Term, Test 2, Final Essay, Final Exam. I’ve been trained to expect deadlines and grade breakdowns. Seeing my Italian roommates study for a course they took two years ago because they didn’t feel ready for the exam right when the course ended makes me question how much I have retained. Could I pass my final for Calculus I took freshman year? Would I understand the plot of “Canterbury Tales” without the daily comprehension quiz?

After I complete my undergraduate education, I won’t be getting a seat assignment and a syllabus with instructions on how to succeed. Maybe a single twenty minute oral exam is a better reflection on the real world than the piles of busy work and online quizzes found throughout the American education system.

Then again, maybe I’ll change my mind when I see how many times I have to take the oral exam.