Photo: "You should rock it" featuring Marc Lamberger. Photo credit: Matthew Strissel

It’s over, and it’s still a curious feeling on some days. Studying in the USA, living with other students in the dormitory, college sports – all these chapters are written. My challenge at Northwest College is successfully done since the mid of May 2015. It was a life lesson, and it was an important one. At the end I can say: I rocked it.

I remember well when I received the information that my fellowship placed me in Powell, a small town in northern Wyoming. It was last July, three weeks before I flew from Frankfurt, Germany, to New York City. I had to search on Google Maps where Powell is and asked myself what I should do there, unaware of the opportunities waiting for me in the wild west. Why Powell and not Chicago, where I dreamed of? 

Today, there is no doubt that my fellowship sent me to the right place in the U.S. I got the opportunity to combine my part-time jobs and media classes with volunteering as a goalkeeper coach for our soccer teams every afternoon. I also want to continue coaching back in Germany.  

I had a good experience in my field of journalism; the small size classes at Northwest were really helpful to start in the U.S. I also got the opportunities to cover the NJCAA national tournament in women’s volleyball and men’s basketball as a sports reporter for the Northwest Trail. It has been an exciting and useful experience to report in another language about big sport events, to shoot photos and make little videos. Who knows where this experience will lead one day. 

Some of you maybe remember the blog, “A New Challenge.” It was a column published on Feb. 3 on the StudyUSA.com blog. I wrote about my new class, media photography, and my goal to make attractive photos for newspapers, magazines and online sites. I’m not saying that I’m a great photographer yet. I’m not at all. I like to look over the shoulders of other photographers and improve. But I definitely can say that I know a lot more about photography now and that my photos are becoming better and better. 

Now, I can use these skills for my summer job at the chamber of commerce in Cody, Wyoming, the footstep of Yellowstone, where I’ll work till the end of June. I’ll take photos and videos in the park as well as in and around Cody, interview people, help German tourists, and support colleagues however I can. This assignment is not really journalism related, but definitely the result of my work on campus the last two semesters. It’s an interesting last challenge in the U.S. and the chance to give something back to the region where I had this tremendous life lesson experience.

In July I’ll travel with friends, who studied in the U.S. as well, to Hawaii and through some states in the South. I’ll take photos so that we have something to remember in a couple of years, of course. Just for us, family and friends back home. We will rock this project before we write a new chapter in Germany.  

Photo credit: Jacqueline Hulse 

Marc Lamberger, 24, is from Munich, Germany. He is a participant of the Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange for Young Professionals (CBYX), a fellowship that brought him to Wyoming. A part-time student at Northwest College, Marc Lamberger has worked and studied as a journalist for the daily newspaper Muenchner Merkur in Germany. He now works more as a young ambassador for CBYX. His assignment is to foster the cultural exchange between Germany and the United States. He is one of 75 German fellows who live in the U.S. for one year, while 75 Americans have the same opportunity in Germany. Lamberger will meet the other fellows at the end of July in Washington D.C. After a seminar, they return together to Germany.