Molly Brueger '19 was a midfielder on the Kalamazoo College women's soccer team, and her career highlights included winning an MIAA championship as a sophomore in 2016.
Hailing from Arlington, Virginia (Yorktown High School), Brueger now plans on teaching English in Japan through the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program.
Many of Molly's Kalamazoo College experiences helped prepare her for this next chapter. After her first year at K, Molly was an international trade intern at the American Institute in Taiwan Commercial Section's Taipei office. She studied abroad for 11 months at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan, and was able to join Doshisha's women's soccer team and play soccer and practice speaking Japanese every day with her new friends. Molly's Senior Individualized Project included research on how studying abroad and acquiring a second language can play a role in shaping different facets of a person's identity.
"K offers a lot of resources that can help students take advantage of opportunities like internships, externships, study abroad, study away, and job hunting/interview support," Molly said.
Molly qualified for the MIAA Academic Honor Roll every season and found competing in soccer helped her set priorities.
"Being a student-athlete helped me realize what is important to me, and to spend my time doing what I am passionate about," she said. "Since I had to balance soccer, school, extracurricular activities, friends, and family, it really helped me stay organized and focused on spending my time doing the things I truly cared about."
Molly said that Kalamazoo College has many great professors who are always challenging you to expand your knowledge of the world and to go out and experience it yourself.
"I was fortunate to have very supportive professors who always gave great advice and went above and beyond to help me be successful," Molly said. "Dr. Frost, in particular, was my first-year seminar professor and has been a constant source of advice, encouragement, and support throughout my time at K. I always enjoyed his lectures because the way he teaches shows how passionate he is about teaching and helping his students succeed, and that made his classes really enjoyable."
Kalamazoo College prepares its graduates to better understand, live successfully within, and provide enlightened leadership to a richly diverse and increasingly complex world. The College's 1,467 students come from 39 states and 28 countries. Through the K-Plan, Kalamazoo College provides an individualized education that integrates rigorous academics with life-changing experiential learning opportunities, including study abroad, career internships and externships, civic engagement and social justice work. K's student-faculty ratio of 13-to-1 allows for small classes and personal attention to individual needs; student-faculty interaction goes beyond the classroom to include working together on research projects, college committees, and community projects. At Kalamazoo College, we do more in four years so students can do more in a lifetime.