What is your background?: My name is Charlotte Greve and I am an international student at Kirkwood. My hometown is Neuwied, which is a city in Germany located in the north of Rhineland-Palatinate between Frankfurt and Cologne. My high school was the Werner-Heisenberg-Gymnasium in Neuwied, where I graduated in 2018. After graduation, I started an apprenticeship as an Industrial Management Assistant and worked in sales and customer service.
I lived with my mother until 2020. I then decided to move to Jena (Thuringia, Germany) and started my studies in business and languages. The main languages I studied were Brazilian, Portuguese, and English.
Otherwise, I have a very small family consisting of my parents, my grandmother, and an aunt and uncle on my mother’s and father’s side.
What brought you to Kirkwood and why?: I am a participant of the Congress Bundestag Youth Exchange (CBYX), which is a scholarship awarded by the US Congress and the German Bundestag to study for one semester at a college in addition to doing a six-month internship. I live with a host family in North Liberty and both of my host parents work at Kirkwood.
What is your program of study and what interests you about it?: My program of study is liberal arts. What I like about the program is that you have an opportunity to attend different classes from various areas of interest. That is why I attend two political classes as well as a business class. This way you can pursue your different interests and see what field you would like to work in later.
Are you involved in anything off of campus?: I currently hold two volunteer positions. One is at the food pantry in North Liberty and the other one is at the North Liberty Community Library.
In addition to that, I start a game day operations internship with the Cedar Rapids RoughRiders hockey team in mid-November. By doing this I meet a lot of new people and am able to learn new things.
What do you do for fun?: I like to go ice skating and I am lucky enough to be able to go ice skating with my international friends every Friday. In addition to that, I like to read and bake cakes. In Germany I also was on a rowing team and acted in the theater.
Where do you see yourself in five years?: In five years, I hope that I will have finished my studies and be firmly established in my professional life. My center of life will be the United States. I hope that I will have the opportunity to pursue my passion for traveling and to have seen some more countries. In addition, I hope that I still will be in contact with my host family, because I feel very comfortable with them.