Spring Break 2026 Participant
It was so wonderful to be learning about Roman culture, history, and art in this class and having the opportunity to connect it to an actual place. The feeling is unreal.
Personally, as a Classics major with a focus in art and archaeology, existing in the physical spaces and interacting with the physical objects was one of the most incredible and formative experiences I have ever had. Before this trip, I had been learning about all of these artifacts and ruins for several semesters and had had to put so much work in with papers, research, and exams. The semester of the trip, I was enrolled in a Pompeii and Herculaneum class. I had never had such and in-depth class over a somewhat smaller topic. Going into this trip, Pompeii in specific was by far the most rewarding experience. Walking on the actual streets and seeing the actual frescoes on the walls after knowing so much about them but only passively viewing them on a projector screen or computer was seriously one of the most unbelievably awesome moments in my life.
Spring Break 2026 Participant
My favorite part of this program was the ability to learn and study up close and personal all the ancient sites learned about in the Lawrence classroom. Details and background information were given in the classroom and then on-site it was super easy to recognize the things that were pointed out and discussed beforehand in greater detail.
Spring Break 2023 Participant
I would recommend knowing more than a little Italian so that you can be as polite as possible to everyone. I would also take as many notes as possible about the places and pictures you take. I took a lot of close-up pictures of things and later forgot what museum we were at that had the items I was interested in. This will also help with the assignments on return. If possible if you can take a video of the item you're most interested in stating the day, time, and the location and maybe the room you're in, this would have been very helpful to me.