Friedericks
Granted, the foot traffic at the Ngorongoro National Park in northern Tanzania is far less congested than that on Kirkwood Avenue in Bloomington on a given day, but Peter Friedericks—pictured here with zebras grazing in the background—has settled in to the routine of a Midwestern campus.
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It was a long journey from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, to the IU Bloomington campus, but IU freshman Peter Friedericks has settled in nicely.
“I’ve found a group of people to play soccer with almost every day,” Friedericks wrote from his computer at Teter-Boisen Hall. “They are mostly international students, so I feel I can relate to them pretty well.”
“Overall, I have enjoyed these first few weeks. They have gone better than I expected them to.”
Friedericks has traveled a long way to begin his undergraduate years, but IU is no stranger to him, nor is Friedericks a stranger to the institution; he received his diploma from IU High School this past spring. In fact, IU High School allowed him to graduate a year early, and he also took advantage of the program’s university-level dual-credit courses.
As to the university environment, Friedericks writes that most of his classes are “pretty small, which is good because we can have discussions more openly that way.”
“I am taking a Russian course and it is pretty tough,” he wrote, “but I think I will pull through.”
Homesick? While Friedericks is a U.S. citizen by birth, he has spent most of his life in East Africa and he admits to “a little bit” of homesickness. But his parents are moving to Wisconsin, so getting home for Thanksgiving is not going to be quite the trek it might have been.
IUHS is administered by the IU School of Continuing Studies’ Independent Study Program; enrollees come from diverse backgrounds and include home-schooled students, performing artists and athletes.
http://scs.indiana.edu
Related story: IU High School in the South Pacific
Read Lisa Denlinger’s story about IUHS students Emily and Kinsey Whearty, who are studying from their computer screens in Vanuatu, a small group of islands between Hawaii and Australia.
http://scs.indiana.edu/hs/wheartypro.html
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