Name: Perry Manross
Graduation Year: 2000
Major: German

Convinced entirely too early that Chemistry would be the mainstay of my post-secondary education and then career, I zealously enrolled in as many related credits a freshman could. By the end of the year, I was as burnt out as a crucible and seriously questioning whether this faculty was something I really loved (or even liked).

Fortunately for me, the Miami Plan prescribed language aptitude. Since I didn’t have any, I picked German nearly arbitrarily. It turned out to be a very useful language.

After a first year, I enrolled in GREAL’s intensive summer courses in Heidelberg, Berlin, and Jena. The experience did wonders for my German and for my outlook.

Upon returning to the U.S., I switched my major to German, continued stints of study abroad, then work abroad, MA in German translation, career abroad, a life abroad.

I now work in communications for German tech firm SAP, coincidently based outside Heidelberg. My apartment is just around the corner from the language laboratory we filed into each day during the GREAL summer courses.

Currently, I’m well into a four-year assignment in Singapore, bringing stories from the developing markets in Asia to employees and press in Germany and the West.