u/Illustrious_Bear660

I am a sixteen year old American. My mom’s entire side of the family is from Sicily, but I was never taught the language nor is it spoken in my house. I have taken Italian in school from 6th-10th grade, and completed Italian 1, 2, and 3. Unfortunately, I do not have the room in my schedule junior or senior year to take College Italian 4 or 5. With the understanding that I will no longer be taking Italian, I have realized how much I want to truly learn the language and get in touch with my Italian culture. However, I am a bit embarrassed to admit that over the past few years, I have put in the minimal amount of effort to succeed in class. It came pretty naturally to me (so I’ve barely studied) and have consistently maintained 98s, 99s and 100s, but my Italian outside of the classroom is—to put it simply—pretty damn awful. I doubt I would even be able to hold a conversation with an Italian. I would love to continue learning Italian and hope to one day become proficient and maybe even something close to fluent. But without school, I have no idea how to keep learning. What are some of the best resources/ways to learn Italian? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

I’m currently nearing the end of my sophomore year of high school, and have been thinking a lot about college and my future. I want to go down the premed track, and have always expected I’d be STEM major, such as biology. However, I’ve been taking Latin for the past two years, and really enjoy it. I’ve been exposed to it for much longer than two years, because my nonna was a Latin professor and would often try to teach it to me. I like Latin a lot, I’m good at it, and I don’t want to completely stop once I graduate high school, so I’ve been considering the possibility of being a classics major. I’m aware that as long as you take the medschool prereqs, you can major in basically anything you want during undergrad. Would this be a good idea, or would I be making it much more difficult for myself to succeed and hopefully make it to medschool one day? What would be some pros/cons? Additionally, what would some good schools to look into be if I did decide to go down this path?