Student Spotlight: Living a Dream

By: Sabhyata Pokhrel

Adjusting to the American way of life, Merle Cornils is a German exchange student who is a junior. She has already gone to New York, Florida and has visited a lot of colleges with her host sisters since she came to Herndon, who are around the same age as her. Merle says ,”So this is my dream, I’m kinda living my dream right now, so it’s amazing.” To be an exchange student she had to write letters to host families about herself so that they know what she likes and everything personal about her. The host families are the families that will take care of anything that exchange students need. The host families decide out of three to four students, who would fit in their house the best. She had no say about which state she would have her host family in since the host families would be the one deciding. If the student wanted to go to a particular state, they could pay more but Merle was content with her host family so she didn’t.

She says that Germany is really different from the United States and Americans are really nice. According to Merle, in Germany, there would be 14-15 subjects that a student needed to learn. Everyday the schedule would change. All the subjects were in German except for English which was compulsory for every student from 1st grade to graduation. She also said that students could graduate after three different years: 13th grade, 9th grade or 10th grade. There are different types of high schools depending on which grade a student will be graduating in. A student graduates depending on their Elementary school’s recommendation. As for Merle, she was enrolled in a high school where a student can graduate in any grade, but still depended on their old elementary teacher.

Merle had heard about baseball, but not softball, which she likes abundantly now. She has just started playing softball which isn’t a sport in Germany and she recalls thinking that when she thought of softball she would think of a sport with a ball that is soft. Merle says that she had a different personality when she was in Germany than how she is now, but overall she really likes Herndon and her new friends she has made here.