At its best, an American education is a painfully rewarding exercise of sharpening a critical mind. Faced with a constant deluge of exams, problem sets, papers and group presentations, you learn how to be at once structured and speculative. You also learn to absorb information that ranges from statistical models to world history and master the art of managing a limited amount of time to complete a seemingly infinite array of tasks. Ideally, you foster the ability to transform opinions into well-crafted judgments, to use the word "I" in a way that merges a strong individual conviction with meticulous logical argumentation.

At its worst, an American education can be the perfect recipe for life-long workaholism. Yes, it is easy to become mesmerized by how many exams, essays and job applications you can juggle with, but all too often the price of academic excellence is the impoverishment of one's inner life. In the crazy rush to get the best grades and find that dream internship that will lead you to your dream profession, it becomes harder and harder to make time just for yourself: to read only for pleasure, learn how to cook a new dish, meet new people or discover the secret stories of your city. Instead, you trade off recreation for recovery so that you can be ready for the next horse race between you and yourself.

Italy too is not without its share of subtle contrasts. Perhaps this country's greatest gift to the world is the uncompromising love for appreciating the beautiful: whenever you walk around Bologna, you cannot fail to notice how almost everything is made to look pleasing to the eye - from sandwiches to suits, cars and palaces. Moreover, Italians have somehow developed a "science" of enjoying life's simple pleasures together with the ones they cherish: good food and good wine are inseparable from good company and there is hardly any pressure to fast-forward these precious moments because of a zillion deadlines.

Yet when form takes precedence over substance, aesthetics turns into superficiality. This is as true for the small, as for the big matters that touch our lives. At its worst, then, Italy is the place where looking good and feeling good is more important than being on time for an appointment, keeping your word or working hard for what you believe in. It is the country where the defense minister deems it necessary to stage a Catholic mass in order to symbolically "reclaim" the city square, which was lost when Muslim immigrants prayed in protest of a latest Gaza war.

At the risk of sounding even more stereotypical, I would say that if we zoom out and compare the United States to most of continental Europe, the positive and negative aspects of the American academia and Italian lifestyle still hold. America teaches pragmatism at the expense of equilibrium. Europe teaches contemplation at the expense of purposeful action. For quite some time I have been searching for the right formula to take only what's best from each place, but with little success. Any suggestions would certainly be welcomed.

Paul Bisca is a graduate student in the IR/Strategic Studies program at the Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) Bologna Center in Italy. He is originally from Romania.