Alumni

• Off-Campus Study

Lifetime Adventure

Twenty years after studying abroad in Madrid, an alumna still feels the influence and learns how the experience affected others on her trip.

By Cara Jepsen ’86

I’ve spent nearly eight months in India over the past few years, studying yoga.

But I don’t think I would have gone if I hadn’t spent a semester in Spain in 1985, when Associate Provost and Associate Dean of Faculty George Speros re-launched the Madrid program. I was terrified to study abroad, but my friend Blair Holmes ’86 convinced me to fill out the form, and I wound up having the adventure—and learning experience—of a lifetime. 

Speros and Spanish ambassador Don Carlos Manzanares served as our guides. Because of them—they had both been knighted—we hobnobbed with royalty and met the king of Spain. From them we learned Castellano Spanish (“it’s ‘eel’, not ‘all!’”), spent time in the bullring at a “tienta,” and learned to appreciate Segovia, El Escorial and other historic sites. Don Carlo took us by the arm through the Prado Museum, pointing out details we’d never catch on our own.

In off hours we ate bocadillos at the Museo del Jamón, rocked out at the Via Lactea, looked for bargains at El Rastro and El Corte Inglés, cheered at bullfights, took road trips to Salamanca and La Alhambra, and rode the Metro like true Madrileños. We lived with families and worked at internships. Mine was at La Radiotelevision Española, which solidified my interest in the media and counted towards my Independent Scholar degree.  

Today the College offers international internship programs in Paris and Santiago and study abroad opportunities in Greece and Turkey and Beijing. There are Associated Colleges of the Midwest programs in Costa Rica, London/Florence, the Czech Republic, Tanzania, Russia, Tokyo, and India. Qualified students can also join other schools’ programs. “More and more students are asking about off-campus studies, even as they are applying to Lake Forest,” says Jan Miller, study abroad coordinator. “At freshman orientation this year, we had a full house for the session on off-campus studies.”

As interest in studying abroad grows at the College, I caught up with friends from my Madrid trip to learn how the experience impacted their lives.

For his internship, John Mojekwu ’85 worked as a teacher’s assistant at a private school, which hired him to teach English for a year. “When we went to Madrid, I felt American because I’d grown up here,” says Mojekwu. “Even though I was legally a Nigerian citizen, inside I felt American. You don’t have to be in this country to be proud of who you are and what you have; that can happen anywhere in the world.”

Brian Slattery ’86 did his internship at Emery Worldwide, where he started out as “Rey de Archivos” (King of the Files) and ended up going on sales calls. “That experience gave me the confidence that I needed to be sure I could do well in international business in the future,” says Slattery, now at Federal Express where he has traveled “nearly everywhere in the world.”

Douglas Stuart ’85 had lived in Chile in high school, so he was familiar with foreign study, but an internship at Abbott Laboratories gave him “the confidence that I could handle myself in a work environment in a foreign country.” In 1993 he moved to Santiago to start an English language school. Dean Speros, the College’s director of international studies, was looking to start a program in Latin America. He and Stuart set up the Chile International Internship program in 1993, and Stuart ran it from 1994–2002.

Krystal Lucas Treanor ’87, who interned at a private school, double majored in Spanish and psychology as a result. “We walked away with such unbelievable exposure and skills.

“It changed and helped me, too. I had been very quiet, very shy, and didn’t know if I could do it.” She worked for a decade as a children’s social worker and travels a lot now as a makeup artist. “It was the best experience I had in my entire college career,” says Treanor. “I’d advocate for anybody to jump aboard and embrace the experience.”

Cara Jepsen ’86 is a Chicago writer and yoga teacher who still shares sangria with Blair Holmes ’86 and his wife a few times each month.