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The
Jean Berlowitz Story
It
has been almost 38 years since I set sail for Germany for my junior
year abroad, and it has been almost 37 years since I returned to
the U.S. a wiser and much more interesting person. What
happened to me?
I jumped off another precipice on my life's road and I landed on
my feet.
I greatly enhanced my love affair with all people, places,
and things foreign to that which I had already experienced.
I learned a whole different approach to my country from a
distance of 5,000 miles and became a true patriot.
I perfected a second foreign language to a level that allowed
me to read widely in that language and to incorporate what I absorbed
into my person.
When
I left the U.S. at age 20, I took with me my by then well-established
core values and my relatively limited life experience. By the time
I returned 11 months later, having had more life experience than
I could fit into multiple volumes, my values and my life experiences
had coalesced; they had flowered into the adult I was to become.
Not a day goes by that I don't remember where I came from. I came
from a set of fine and loving parents and from my Junior
Year in Freiburg. I am deeply grateful for both.
Since
my experience through the Junior Year in Freiburg program was a
defining moment in my life I decided that I wanted everyone to have
an opportunity to experience the same thing. So I developed the
Jean Berlowitz Endowed Study Abroad Fund
for the Junior Year in Munich program through a gift from my estate
plans.
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