Sean McLaughlin
Amherst, Massachusetts
I'm a dual-degree student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst studying International Marketing and French. Travel and language have always been a huge part of my life. I do my best to never have my feet on the ground for too long. Pretty much as soon as I get home from one trip, I start figuring out how I can save up for another.
I've...
...played saxophone in a symphonic band and jazz band that performed through France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, and Austria
...been a part of a student ambassador program in Ireland, England, and Wales
...been an exchange student in Avignon, France during my junior year of high school
...volunteered on a cheetah reserve in South Africa
...played soccer with/handed out food to children in an orphanage in Swaziland
...surfed and scuba dived in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Mozambique
My love for travel started at a fairly young age (and I guess my fascination with language started just about around the same time.) When I was in 4th grade, my mom decided that we were going to go on a family trip to France - where we would visit one of my dad's best friends. That was my first time out of the country and it was everything I didn't expect it to be. I thought it was going to be frightening... difficult to adjust to... a world foreign to the only one I had ever known. I couldn't have been more wrong. Never before had I felt more at ease/home than when I was thousands of miles from my own, in a country where the language wasn't my own (but I wouldn't let that stop me).
When we got back to the US, I decided that I wanted to enroll in and afterschool French class that was offered in my elementary school. We didn't really learn grammar, at least not the same way you do in high school, just more of an emersion kind of program. It just seemed like the right thing to do to 4th grade me. After all, if we ever wanted to go back, it would be cool to be able to understand what people were saying... to break down that social barrier.
If there's one thing that I've learned from travelling, it's that language doesn't separate us, it's there to connect us. Currently I'm taking courses in French, Spanish, and Italian - but I don't plan on stopping there. I know that my love for languages will eventually help to make me: a better businessman; a better traveller; a better person; a better citizen of the world.