MY JOURNEY

 

I am a traveler, a scholar, and an enthusiast when it comes to foreign languages and cultures. My intercultural experiences began early, with my first taste of travel in the summer of 2006 with a visit to El Salvador.  My trips have expanded since then, with a music tour to Europe, a winter semester in Costa Rica and a fall semester in Austria. (For more information about my international experiences, click here.) I focused largely on German during my academic career, which started in middle school with a desire to learn more about my family history. Since then I have dabbled in Italian and French, and, due in part to the University of Delaware’s Three Language Major, I was able to add Arabic and Spanish to my repertoire. I have found that languages and accents come easily to me, which is a gift I am increasingly learning to appreciate.

 

During my semester in Salzburg, Austria, I studied German and Austrian culture, which left me with a love of Austria and the desire to return to a foreign country in any capacity I could find. With the help of one of my German professors, I was fortunate to come across the United States Teaching Assistant program, run by the Fulbright Commission. Between fall of 2012 and spring of 2014  I was an English assistant in Upper Austria, aiding my colleagues in the English departments of three Austrian grammar schools in the small town of Gmunden, and then in the capital of Linz. I taught multiple lessons per week on a variety of subjects, usually on some aspect of American culture or history. For those two years I was able to speak German to my heart’s content, and to explore Austria and its surrounding countries.

 

I have always been an advocate of study abroad, and the International Education Management program seems to be the way to continue with that advocacy, and turn it into a career. I have helped many of my friends who have sought advice about a potential study abroad program or about what they might experience in another country, and I have always been thrilled to help them. I have also organized multiple international trips with other teaching assistants who are as interested in other cultures as I am, to places like Athens, Budapest, and Slovakia. The desire to help others study abroad and my experiences traveling are the main reasons I applied to the Middlebury Institute; I have experienced the myriad benefits of studying and working abroad, and I hope to enable students from every background to be able to experience the wonder and constant surprise of life and learning in another culture.