Italian or French? Why not Spanish?

I have this inner debate with myself, oh perhaps, every other week. Whether to focus my studies on French or Italian and sometimes even Spanish (though I think I can safely say that I have let Spanish go for the moment). Why not both you may ask? Both would be nice, if two language classes a semester didn't take up so much time and credits. I want to study subjects other than languages such as history, english, art, film, religion, anthropology, and politics.



The reason I want to take French even though I am franco-american is because I want to study in my maternal language. I never got the opportunity to spend time in class speaking french, discussing french books, literature, history, films and art. I hate it when people say, "But you're french, why would you want to study it?". Well, why do you study English? When people say this... I get irritated and come to the conclusion that the person is a bit dumb. French is a hard language to speak and write and one can never seem to get it perfect. I've lived in the States longer than I've lived in France at this point in my life and the reason why I want to spend time surrounded by le français is because I miss it. I miss specific vocabulary words that are "so french" and idioms that can't be translated into English. I miss the hearing phrases and words that trigger memories but are words that I forget I have in my vocabulary. That is why I want to study french--to find my french side and have my own community of frenchies.

Italian. I decided to study Italian this semester because I was bored with Spanish. Honestly, I'm scared of being bored with Italian once I start studying in depth grammar, but that's something I'll deal with when it comes. Italiano è bello, smooth and most importantly FUN. The Italians are just fun people and it's been a blast learning a new language from ground zero. My reason for continuing with Italian was initially so I could go abroad. Now I'm unsure whether I'll end up doing that just because Mount Holyoke and the 5-College area have so many great classes to chose from and taking time to study abroad cuts into the amount of classes I can take advantage of during my stay here. Come to think of it, languages take time out of the possible classes I can take. I just think it's important to learn languages and become fluent or competent enough to understand and hold conversations with other people. I feel like you discover different parts of yourself when you speak another language. Languages enrich your life.