Hello all!
My name is Jonathan Borgese and I just finished my third year at the Ohio State University. I am originally from Smithtown, New York, which is on Long Island, although my family and I moved to Raleigh, North Carolina this past summer. My major is “Integrated Social Studies,” which is essentially a history major geared towards someone who wants to teach high school level social studies. After I graduate from Ohio State, I intend to go to a graduate school to get my Masters of Education in teaching Social Studies and plan to teach social studies/history at a high school.
I find history to be an extremely important and fascinating subject, particularly World War II. I had thought about studying abroad before, but never really looked into it much until I had heard about this program. World War II is one of the biggest and most interesting subjects to me, so when I found out about this program I knew that I had to apply. I’ve only truly been outside of the country once before, and I’ve never flown overseas, so I am extremely excited to see Europe and all of these historic locations.
The classes that I have taken in preparation for this trip has really been an eye-opener for me, as I have never truly studied World War II in detail before. In particular I specialized in studying the German opposition to Hitler and the July 20th plot. I found this topic to be one of the most fascinating parts of World War II and am extremely excited to give my site report at the Memorial to the German Resistance in Berlin, where many of the July 20th plotters were shot. I hope that by going on this trip I can gain an even deeper understanding of World War II and its implications in a way that I can’t just gain in a classroom.
I would also greatly like to thank all of the professors and donors who have made such a cool trip possible for me. Without them I may have never had such an awesome opportunity to study abroad and study World War II history at the same time.
– Jonathan Borgese