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CCHS alum touts German studies

Cory Gregg talks with Marilyn Buttjer’s German class Thursday at Charles City High School. (Press photo James Grob.)
Cory Gregg talks with Marilyn Buttjer’s German class Thursday at Charles City High School. (Press photo by James Grob)
By James Grob, jgrob@charlescitypress.com

Cory Gregg wants Charles City students to know that learning a foreign language — in his case, German — can present them with a range of options.

“If you’re unsure what you want to do, there are opportunities for you,” Gregg said to Marilyn Buttjer’s German class at Charles City High School Thursday.

Gregg, a 2010 Charles City grad, talked to the class about opportunities that many high school students may not know about.

“I want you to have an understanding of how how German can be a part of your future,” Buttjer said to her class as she introduced Gregg.

Gregg is currently doing post-graduate work in Siegen, Germany. He took something of a scenic route to get there.

“I was in German just like you guys, and I was really only interested in German because my ancestors were German, and so I thought, why not learn German for my foreign language instead of Spanish,” he said.

Gregg visited Germany while in high school through the school’s German-American Partnership Program (GAPP). “It was awesome, but I never thought I’d ever have a reason to go back to Germany,” he said. “I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do when I was in high school. I kind of thought I would become a teacher.”

Gregg attended Northern Iowa with the intention of studying history.

“I loved history, but realized I didn’t want to be a teacher, so I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” he said. He said he not speak German at all for three years in college, then took a German class at UNI, and learned about an exchange program. He lived in Germany for five months through that program and ended up with a German minor. He started to look into master’s programs in Germany, but didn’t think he was qualified.

“I’m pretty smart, but I’m not that smart,” he said. “I thought it would be too difficult to live in a foreign country.”

However, Gregg found a program in a university in the German town of Siegen. He said that his expenses in Germany are substantially lower than what his expenses were when he was attending Northern Iowa. He studies in a master’s program called “Roads to Democracy.”

He has been able to study things such as political science, history, sociology, international relations, government, economics, peace and security and sometimes even a little bit of philosophy.

“It’s a very broad subject and a lot of things get thrown into it,” he said.

Gregg discussed opportunities such as au pair programs, internships and study abroad programs. His studies in Germany have taken him all over Europe and as far as the headquarters of the United Nations in New York. He is currently considering a career in diplomacy, once he’s finished with his masters.

“The reason all these opportunities were available to me was because I had a background in German,” he said.

Gregg told the class that universities are free in Germany, and that all three state universities in Iowa have programs which allow students to study abroad.

“These are all things I didn’t know when I was in your place,” he said.

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