Anna. Turin
Where were you born?
I was born in Turin. I went to school here and now I study in the university in Turin as well. In my third year in high school I traveled to Ireland for a summer exchange program to study a little bit of English. I’ve been there for a month with my friends, it was amazing. I’ve done an exchange program in New York city as well. After that I developed a habit for traveling. I love traveling, seeing new places.
In Italy, the elementary, the middle and the high schools are in different buildings or in the same one?
They are in different buildings. You go to the elementary school until 11 years old, then you go to middle school from 11 till 14 or 15, high school is from 14 – 15 till 19 – 20. They are different schools. Primary and middle schools are the same for everyone, the same subjects. There are different types of high schools. You can choose the school according to what you want to do. I chose a scientific high school. We had to do a lot of physics, mathematics, sciences. You can also go, for example, to a humanitarian school, they study languages, including Latin and ancient Greek. In Italy, if you go to a high school you have to learn Latin, even though it’s a dead language.
In middle school I also started to play flute. So during high school I also attended conservatory. In the middle school we had a very peculiar class, we had the usual lessons in the morning, but in the afternoon we had an opportunity to learn how to play an instrument. You could choose to play violin, piano, guitar, or flute. Also once a week we had an orchestra class, where we played together. At Christmas we had a little concert, where we played for friends and relatives.
You said that after the middle school you also went to a conservatory, did you do it in parallel to the high school?
Yes, I did both. You can choose to do the high school at the conservatory, there you also have the usual lessons, but at an easier level and you focus more on music. But I didn’t choose that kind of school, I went to a normal high school where we had lectures from 8am till 2pm. After that I was going to the conservatory where I had private lessons, lessons on history of music, harmony, orchestra, flute quartets and so on. Every day I would come home at 7 or 8pm, because in the morning I was at high school and in the afternoon I was in the conservatory, then I would get home and I had a lot to study.
Conservatory is a way to become a professional musician, right? If you wanted to be a professional musician, did you need to do something after the conservatory?
No, that’s it. Depending on the instrument, you have to study between 7 and 10 years. When you finish conservatory, you get a diploma and that is a degree in music. So after the 7 or 10 years in conservatory you are considered a musician and you have to look, for example, for a place in an orchestra.
10 years? How many did you do?
I studied 7, because my instruments requires 7.
So you could have chosen to become a professional flute player and find a place in an orchestra?
I could but physics already had a place in my heart by then.
Do you still find time to play?
Yes, I do, but not as much as I wished. Especially in the last two years my master studies were very intense. But when I find time, I play, I love it.
What did your grandparents do?
From the side of my mother, my grandfather was an engineer at the polytechnic institute in Turin.
He was a professor there?
Yes, he was a professor. He taught electronics for 40 years. He also did a lot of projects all around the world, he travelled a lot. I think one of his projects was related to the development of space shuttle in the US.
My grandmother is a translator. She speaks 5 languages. She worked for about 10 years, then she had three kids, so she decided to leave her job and take care of the family. She studied English, Spanish, French, and German. She translated books, she was also translating conferences or events.
From my father’s side. My grandfather was a postman and my grandmother was a tailor. My father is a teacher of physics. My mother was also a teacher of physics and math.
How did you decide to do physics?
I’ve grown up with physics, that’s for sure. When I was growing up my father was trying to teach me anything he could in physics and math. I remember when I was 5 or 6 and I was going to bed, he was asking about different properties of triangles.
He asked about triangles when you were going to bed?
Yes, I was in elementary school and he was asking about the properties of triangles, like equilateral triangles. I couldn’t go to sleep until I’d resolve his questions.
I also remember that on Sundays we used to have pizza together. He would take the upper part of the pizza box, which remained clean, and he would write mathematics formulae. I think I was 11, and he tried to explain general relativity that way.
He explained the general relativity on the pizza box?
Yes, exactly. He didn’t push me to physics. He wished I was a mathematician. My grandfather was an engineer, but my great-grandmother was a mathematician. She was one of the first women graduating in math in Italy. She graduated in 1922. So my father hoped that I would go in that direction and do math at the university. But I decided that I liked physics more, so I did physics.
You went to the physics and math high school. At which point did you decide to do physics at the university?
In the summer when I finished high school and started university. I wasn’t sure what to do next. At some point in high school I wanted to be a writer, then I wanted to be a musician. Then, after I finished the high school, I decided that I want to continue with scientific subjects. At first, I wanted to do engineering, but then one morning in September I woke up and decided that I want to do physics, so I went and subscribed to physics at the university. It was kind of random, but I’m happy about my choice.
I see. So you wanted to be an engineer, then you woke up one morning and decided to be a physicist?
Yes, I wanted to be a mathematician, then I wanted to do engineering. During that summer I visited the polytechnic institute in Turin, because I was curious which subjects I would do if I decided to study engineering. I realized that it would be too practical, it wasn’t really my cup of tea. So I decided to do physics, which is a good compromise between math and engineering.
I had a tough period when I started the university because during the first year you have a lot of mathematical courses, you don’t see physics until the end of the first year. I loved the courses, I enjoyed the classes very much so I spent the whole year wondering, maybe I made the wrong choice, maybe I should have chosen to do math. But in the end I’m very happy that I do physics.
Is there any selection at the university? Anybody can go or do you need a certain graduation mark at high school to be admitted?
It depends on the subject, on how many applications the university has. In physics there are very few applications each year, because not many people want to do physics, compared, for example, to polytechnic. For physics there is no entry test. Once you start the university, you need to take a test, called the minimal requirement test, which is designed to make sure that your previous level of education is sufficient to understand the physics courses. In order to be admitted to the exams at the university, you need to pass this test first. You can take this examination as many times as you want. You can keep on taking it until you pass it. But you cannot take other exams if you don’t pass this test.
There are other universities, which have entrance exams. For example, there are hundreds of applications in medicine for a few places available, so in medicine they have very harsh examinations and selection process. For the polytechnic, there is also a selection process.
Do you need to be Italian to study or you just need to know Italian?
You don’t need to be Italian, but you need to speak Italian, at least for the bachelor degree, because all the classes are in Italian. We are tying to change it. I’m one of the people who fights the most for a change. Hopefully, in the next few years, there will be parallel courses in English, so that you could take your studies from bachelor to master all in English. But so far for the bachelor degree you need to know Italian. For the master studies it’s a bit different, for example this year there was an Erasmus student for a few months with us and he asked the professors to teach in English, so we had some classes in English on request, so to say.
So really, if, for example, a guy from Russia decides to learn Italian language, he can just come to study at a University as long as he has enough money to survive in Turin?
Yes, the universities are public in Italy, there are some fees between a few hundred euros and a thousand per semester. But other than that they are free.
You did a lot of summer programs, how did you decide to do them?
I’ve decided to do the summer programs at the end of my second year. I’ve had a very positive experience with the study abroad programs in high school and I thought that it would be very important to work with different people at institutes in other countries. There is the Erasmus program, you need to pass a selection process: you present your project and the institute where you want to go. If they select you, then you get a scholarship to live and perform research. This was my first summer experience. I enjoyed it a lot. Last year I’ve applied with the European Space Agency, this was not an Erasmus program, this was managed by the Leiden University and the ESA center. You also had to pass the selection. I’ve spent my last summer in Leiden and I fell in love with the city and the university. This year I’m going to the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. This is sponsored by INFN as an exchange program between institutes in Italy and SLAC.
I know that you work at a center for immigrants. Can you say a few words about it? How did you start? How is it going now?
We had the idea to start this center when I was in my first year at the University. We have started to work with my friends from high school in a center that helped adults who were in difficult situations, for example, we were distributing food and clothes. We also provided financial support to these people and families, many of them were homeless. While we were volunteering there, we started to think that many of these people have children. We thought: “how about doing something for the kids in these families?” We started to plan after-school programs for the kids. In the beginning it was difficult. There were four of us doing this but only a few kids, 4 or 5. So we’ve heard from people in the center: “I don’t know if the idea will work, you have very few children coming”. We continued nevertheless, we had a program on Saturday afternoon. We helped them to do their homework for two hours and then we organized some games for them. Then more and more kids came.The kids talked to their friends. We have also contacted middle schools in the area. The headmasters of these middle schools started to send us the problematic children, for example, if they had behavior problems or if they had problems with the studies. We grew. By the end of the year we had 40 kids and 15 volunteers. It was quite an experience. The number actually keeps growing. Now it’s the fourth year of the project, we have more than 50 kids and around 20 volunteers. Sadly we need to to say “no” to some kids, because we don’t have space for everyone, we need to select. We focus on the more problematic cases. We didn’t expect it to happen. When we started there were only four of us and we had a room that was 2 meters by 2 meters – very small. Then we moved to a larger space in another center, there is now a basketball field and a soccer field.
What kind of center is it?
It’s called oratorio. It’s owned by a religious community.
Is it associated to the Catholic church?
The place is owned by a catholic community or parish, but we, as volunteers are associated to another catholic community, so it’s a cooperation between the two communities. It’s quite peculiar, because most of the kids are muslims, some of the kids are christian orthodox, but none of them are catholic. The religious differences don’t matter in this case.
Where do the kids come from?
Most of them are from Northern Africa: Morocco, Libya, Tunisia. Some are from Turkey, from Eastern Europe: Albania, Romania, Moldova. We had a couple of Latin American kids, one was from Colombia and the other one was from Ecuador.
When kids come, do they already speak Italian?
Most of them already speak Italian. There were some cases, when the kids didn’t speak, and that was quite hard. When they arrived, they only spoke Arabic. They also go to school and they learn Italian at school – that helps us. When they come to the center, we also try to teach them, we have books with pictures, where we can point at things and teach them Italian words. Even if they speak Italian, they often have problems with grammar. Italian language has a lot of complicated grammar rules, so you need to practice them. They also have problems with pronunciation of some words.
This is half of the day on Saturday?
Yes, and in some cases we also follow the children during the week. This happens if the kid has some other problems, for example, sometimes they have some serious behavioral problems. There are a few cases, where we feel that we need to follow them more closely. Then we try to engage them during the whole week. I send them text messages, meet them one or two days during the week.
We also train some older children to become volunteers themselves. It is important that this center does not close when we can’t take care of it. At some point I will probably move away from Italy for studies. Other volunteers as well. People will have jobs, families, other things to do. But we also want the center to continue operating. We are teaching the older kids to become the volunteers, how to help with the homework, how to organize the other kids to play. It’s not easy to involve 50 kids in games, this is something we had to learn as well. I usually meet the future volunteers once a week on Fridays. There are 11 guys now. They learn how to organize the center, there are a lot of things that we need to organize. For example, we do fundraising events. We teach them how to spend the money. What they can and cannot do. How to handle different situations.
Do you have mostly boys or girls?
There are about half girls and half boys. Among the older kids, the “helping volunteers”, there are 7 boys and 4 girls, but the 4 girls are very active.
What kind of games you play with the kids?
They love playing football, it’s kind of impossible to stop them if they start, table football, basketball, volleyball. There are some team games or competitions. Ones a year we do a hunt, where they have to find hidden things. At the end of the school year, if the weather is warm, we also have the game when they fill balloons with water and through at each other.
The type of games also depends on how much time they have. At first we make sure that they finish the homework before they start playing, because they really need our help in finishing. If we have a lot of time afterwards, we can have more complicated games. Sometimes it’s already late and we just give them a ball and they play football.
Do you also interact with the parents?
Parents always come, because they need to take the children. We try to help the families as well. The families get support from the center. We monitor also the situation at home, so that the kids are not mistreated.
To get the money, do you do some fundraising events?
Yes, for example, we organize huge dinners. We invite people. We present the project, the kids. Some of the kids also help us, for instance, serving at the tables. People can interact with the kids, ask them about what they do at the center, what they learn. This is our main source of income during the year. We usually do two or three evenings during the year. One in the beginning of the school year, in September, when we start, one at Christmas, and the last one in April or May to cover the rest of the year. Then we have food collecting activities in supermarkets all over Turin. This is not managed by our specific project but by the whole center. Some of the food we collect we use for afternoon snack. When they finish the homework, we have the snack all together, then they start playing. We also collect a lot of school materials, which we distribute to the students: paper, pens, erasers.