Menomonie High School

I graduated from Menomonie High School in 2011 as a recipient of the President’s Education Award and World Language Department Award and as a two-time Advanced Placement Scholar with Distinction. I was an active student, having had served on multiple boards at my high school and in my local community, competing numerous times in state-level forensics (competitive speaking) competitions as well as local theater performances and working part-time as a certified nurse aide.

University of Wisconsin–Madison

In the fall semester of 2011, I enrolled in the University of Wisconsin–Madison in linguistics and German with a certificate in European studies. Through my experience in Madison, I developed socially, academically and professionally. At this time, my hobbies of language learning and politics transformed into professional skills, and I first came in contact with the seat of power in my home state and abroad.

While in Madison, I excelled academically, extra-curricularly and professionally. I graduated with distinction and with Honors in the Liberal Arts and received numerous scholarships and awards for my academic studies, an internship at the U.S. Embassy–Berlin and an academic year abroad in Germany as well as the Foreign Language and Area Studies grant for Turkish. As an undergraduate, I also continued my studies of Spanish, French and American Sign Language, researched German as well as non-Indo European languages in multiple linguistics projects, and participated in public-service-oriented courses in public health and politics. Extra-curricularly, I served as the secretary for the Linguistics Student Organization and as a host for the international-politics-oriented radio program Coup du Monde, and professionally, I had the opportunity to work with many people from all walks of life — from Syrian refugees to disadvantaged students to diplomats — all the while balancing multiple jobs to fund my education.

University of Freiburg

Following my junior year in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, with the Academic Year in Freiburg exchange program, I began my studies in 2015 as a Master of Arts student in European linguistics. During my studies, I worked at the university as a research assistant focusing on German—English translation and English copy-editing at the Collaborative Research Center 948.

This course of study closely followed the structural courses of the Masters of Arts programs in German and English linguistics yet placed an additional emphasis on learning European languages and their linguistic structures in addition to academic and professional mastery of German and English. The University of Freiburg itself is considered one of the best universities in Europe for Germanic and English linguistics and is similarly highly ranked in the linguistics of Romance, Slavic and classical languages as well as historical linguistics.

As an international student in Freiburg, I was actively involved in the ever-changing cultural, academic, professional and political scenes in Germany and Europe as a whole. Additionally, I also taught English to immigrants as a volunteer and visited high schools in Germany to explain post-secondary opportunities as a study ambassador with the Baden-Württemberg State Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts.