Column: Finding ‘la dolce vita’ at UNC

After two consecutive summers abroad, I thought for sure a summer in Washington, D.C., would be a more run-of-the-mill experience. Suffice to say, it wasn’t.

Expecting to work an internship for the whole summer, I was instead left with only three and a half weeks to work, thanks to a variety of factors entirely out of my control — ask those hackers that have been in the news recently.

While waiting those many weeks to hear if I would be able to work at all, I learned a lot about “going with the flow.”

Perhaps before explaining what this summer means for the topic of this column, I should explain what the idea behind “The Weekly Word” is.

I am a nerd, especially when it comes to world languages. Having studied several and tried to study many more, I can proudly say I have the relatively useless skill of knowing a few words or phrases in a wide variety of languages.

Hence the column — my “weekly word,” or let’s be honest, phrase, will not be an English one, but I will do my best to apply non-translatable words, idioms or ideas as they apply to you, the reader, and your life in college.

So how does this theme relate to my summer? My frustrating, exciting and nerve-wracking experience has informed the philosophy that I hope to take into this semester — my last here at UNC — which is to embrace “la dolce vita.”

To many of you, I’m sure this Italian phrase doesn’t seem so foreign. Perhaps you’ve taken Latin or know a little bit of Spanish, and you probably know that it literally means “the sweet life.”

But “la dolce vita” encompasses so much more than simple sweetness. Its origin in pop culture can be traced to the 1960 Federico Fellini film of the same name, a post-war drama cataloguing a reporter’s existential crisis-tinged weeklong sojourn in Rome.

This reporter, Marcello Rubini, finds “the sweet life” in fits and spurts mixed with episodes of deep sadness. True happiness eludes him, but on the way he is swept up in the glitz and glamour that the Roman lifestyle presents to him.

All of this to say, in short, that “la dolce vita” is just as easily a metaphor for your own college experience. We are all searching for our happiness and our purpose in the four years we have as undergraduates. We have moments of sweetness and chances for comedy, but periods of sadness or tragedy can also find their way into our lives.

After this summer, I’ve decided I need to learn to embrace them both: the sweetness and the bitterness.

Indeed, I’m sure many seniors will agree with me that embarking on this final year is in fact bittersweet. To the freshmen whose journeys are only just beginning, I hope you will find in this sappy senior’s column the genuine hope that you will fulfill all your dreams for the four years ahead of you.

But if you don’t, that’s okay too. And to all: in the good times and the bad, just remember that you have dived headfirst into your very own “dolce vita” — embrace it.