Global Ambassador Helena Drake
Major: Comparative Literature
College: New College West
International Experience: CYA in Athens, Tallinn University, CUPA
Location: Greece, Estonia, France
Hi! I’m Helena, a Comparative Literature major with certificates in Medieval Studies and Slavic Languages and Literatures. I’m from South Bend, Indiana, and had never left the country until being a Princeton student! I’ve had many opportunities to study abroad during my time here. After my sophomore year, I spent six weeks in Athens taking a Princeton course in Ancient Greek at the CYA. For my junior spring, I spent the semester in Paris with CUPA studying at Sorbonne University and Université Paris 8 (St. Denis). This past summer, right after Paris, I spent two months in Tallinn, Estonia studying Russian at Tallinn University. All of these opportunities were amazing and allowed me to travel all over Europe, improve skills across three different languages, and create some of my closest friendships with other Princeton students. The food in Athens was incredible, and I will always treasure the experiences I had traveling the islands and to Delphi. In France, I most enjoyed the opportunity to be directly enrolled in French universities and be completely immersed in the language and educational system. I loved the chance to visit the Musée D’Orsay with my art history class and study the works of the impressionists. I also lived with a wonderful host family which completely transformed my level of French. I was shocked by how much I could speak, understand, and read by the end of my time in Paris. I spent my breaks in the spring traveling across Europe to eight different countries. In Tallinn, I worked on improving my Russian through classes at Tallinn University while living with a Russian-speaking host. I got to travel to Finland, Latvia, and Lithuania, and experience the Baltic States and the unique culture of Tallinn, Estonia. I highly recommend study abroad at Princeton, and am happy to talk about studying both during the semester and during the semester!
Student organization(s) I'm a part of at Princeton:
Aquinas Institue, El Centro Volunteering
Feel free to also ask me about:
Finding a religious community abroad