Name: Jay Malone
Graduation Year: 2007
Major: History and English Literature
Minor: German

I started taking German as a sixth-grader, but it wasn’t until I went on the GRAMELAC summer trip to Heidelberg, Jena, and Berlin that I first saw a potential future in Germany. Thanks to the courses taught by Herr Carels and the rest of the team, I ended up deciding to take on a minor in German, and continued my language studies back in Oxford.

After graduating, I used my degree in English to start a career teaching my native tongue, a decision that ended up taking me across the world, from Iceland to Tajikistan. Incredibly, regardless of where I went, I always seemed to find some use for my German. I spoke it with the local Slovak school teachers at the school I taught at in Kosice, many of whom didn’t speak English. In Albania, I tried to ask a bus driver five times in English when to get off, but it wasn’t until I asked in German that he finally understood and explained that I was going the wrong way. And I spoke German with several of my professors at my university in St. Petersburg, an institution where a significant chunk of the student body is fluent in German but struggles in English.

After a few years living that crazy life, I decided to make my way back to Germany, and I’ve been settled down in Rhineland for the last three years now. During that time, I studied for my Master’s degree at the University of Siegen and started an advisory service, Eight Hours and Change. I can thank the GRAMELAC department and the professor who taught me for much of the inspiration that drove me to move back to Germany, and I would highly recommend the German department at Miami to any students interested in expanding their horizons.