My name is Karin; Ian is my son. Last summer, he participated in a summer TREK to Germany and has applied to study abroad (again in Germany) next year.
When Ian was working through the college application and decision process his senior year, one of the few pieces of advice I gave him was to make studying abroad a priority, as not going abroad during college was one of my few regrets. He’d already spent two weeks with a host family in Japan as part of a sister cities exchange before his freshman year of high school, so we’d had some experience with Ian traveling internationally without us.
I was excited about his opportunity to take a class for credit abroad with Wooster professors and fellow students before heading out for a full semester abroad – it felt like a great way for him to get a sense of what it would be like to not be on campus before fully committing to a full semester in another country. Additionally, Ian and a few of the students went a few days earlier to visit their German TA and explore Austria before meeting up with the rest of the class. This, to me, embodied why Ian chose Wooster – a global community, curious and collaborative. We loved receiving photos and updates of their time together in Germany, experiences which only fueled his drive to do a full semester abroad.
