Winterline Global Education

I would advise anyone taking a Winterline gap year to give every little, tiny, minuscule thing your absolute ALL. The more you put into this program, the more intentional and open you are, the more you will gain. You are building confidence every step of the way and if you think for one second it’s just going to appear on graduation day, you’re wrong. That said, just jump in. Be kind, too. People are what make a place special and if you aren’t respectful, you’ll really just end up hurting your own experience and you'll really miss out on some really unique human connections.

There are three types of days one could have on Winterline: a rest day, a core day (ISP prep, paperwork, even interviews sometimes), and a partner day. Partners are what makes Winterlines. These are the people or associations that teach us skills. Robotics, Scuba Diving, mask making, farm work, etc. A prime example of this is our first independent project that took place in trimester three in Monteverde, Costa Rica.

Each student stayed with a homestay family. Out of many choices, I worked on a coffee farm. I woke up every day at 7 to have breakfast with my host family, grab my taxi to the farm at 7:45 to be there by 8. Typically, you’d be with the group waking up and eating breakfast together and leaving together, led by your field advisers (holding your hand through it). This time, I was responsible. Each day, I learned a new element in the process of producing coffee. Each partner is unique and interesting, trust me.

My biggest fear abroad was my big, solo travel extravaganza. I was terrified to wake up and catch that train to the airport in Munich. Terrified of checking my bag and terrified of going through security, and finding my gate, and boarding the plane, and landing, and getting my bag, and getting a taxi to the women I was staying within Seville, Spain. I was scared of the classes I was taking and exploring alone and eating alone and looking alone and feeling alone.

Then just as I imagined it, I did it. But instead of my hands shaking the whole time, they were still. I haven’t been able to explain it up to this point. The fear just went away, after achieving each step of the way. After getting off the train in Munich. I was just okay after that. Then, suddenly, I was on my flight to Prague to meet back up with my group and it was over. But I did it. And I’ll do it again.

From scuba diving in the Caribbean and working on farms in the rainforest, to traveling by train in Mumbai and walking the notoriously hectic streets of Bangkok and Phnom Penh, I have done so many things as an amputee and a “child” and a female- things people wrote off for me before I got the chance to consider them as options myself, but things I did nonetheless. I transferred the things people didn’t think I should do to my bucket list.

I’d like to mention that I had never traveled before. I felt like I had something to prove, which is a mentality that left me frustrated when I fell down or when I needed help up a railing-less staircase. I felt like I had to be everything at once, 100% of the time, and that just isn’t possible. Traveling is important; it liberates a person and it reconditions how they view the world. But everyone has their days, and you can’t expect the entire journey to be a straightforward path to glory and epic-ness. However, you can choose, every morning you wake up and wherever that may be, to thrive.

Working for Winterline has opened me up to more self-reliance and self-discipline. While I am part of a team, I often work solo on projects. I have learned to rely on myself, to trust my intuition, and to be comfortable making decisions that impact my role and work with students. I work remotely from home and have been given more autonomy and freedom in my day to day work, and through that, I've developed greater self-discipline. One way that shows up is in setting my own priorities with projects and "to-dos", and creating uninterrupted space to work on those.

One unique aspect of our program is the Independent Study Project. For this project, students spend a week in Europe learning a new skill. It is a completely self-designed and executed project, where students come back sharing so many great stories and growth moments.

One of those stories was from a student who chose to bike pack through Italy. She told the story of getting lost while biking and realizing she had to turn around after she had descended a very long downhill section of road. This student talked about not only the physical challenges of bike packing but also the mental challenges and how she overcame those in pursuit of learning a new skill and expanding her comfort zone.

I have had the opportunity to travel to 10 different countries with our students as a Field Advisor on the Global Skills Program. Winterline is newly offering a "Choose Your Path" option that allows students the opportunity to choose between different itinerary options, one is to travel to Africa. I am intrigued and curious by this option, to travel to South Africa and Rwanda and be exposed to a variety of new skills and community. I would choose this option for the chance to see new places in the world and because of the focus on community building. This is a skill I believe can apply to so many avenues in my life, and I imagine I'd be really inspired by what I learned, to implement positive change in my home community.

Working for Winterline is unique in that we are a smaller organization which allows everyone to have a voice and work closely together. We are always striving to create the most fulfilling and well-rounded program for our students. This means that we seek and implement feedback from our field staff and students to understand their experience in more depth and find ways to better what we do year after year.

I believe Winterline is successful because every person on our staff is passionate about our student experience, excited about travel, and values the change and personal growth that comes from hands-on learning experiences. We strive to take education outside of the classroom and into the hands of all our students, introducing them to a variety of new real-world skills.