By Matteo Travers, Verto Discovery Manager
Don’t wait for this opportunity to join the Fall 2024 Community pass you by – Enroll today and start meeting your community!
Verto Education participants– Vertoans as we call ourselves, are some of the brightest students that this world has yet to meet. As we gear up for our largest semester in Verto history, Vertoans are spending this spring applying for their passport, connecting with their peers virtually, and getting ready for their first semester of college abroad at one of our 5 global locations.
Verto is a library made up of thousands of stories, each student the author of their own story. Here are a few of our Vertoans who share the start of their story:
👋 Name: Marlee Duchon, she/her
📍 Hometown: Cleveland, Ohio
🗺️ Verto Location(s) : Florence Fall 2024, Seville Spring 2025
🛤️ Post-Verto Plan: Florida Atlantic University
📘 Name of your Verto story: Only Just the Beginning
I’ve known for years that all I wanted to do was travel, see the world, learn new things. This past summer I traveled the Middle East with my friends for a month and had the time of my life. I continue to crave that feeling of adventure again. Leaving the small town we grew up in opens your eyes to the unimaginable. I gained experience and knowledge I didn’t know I was capable of. I also met amazing people I still talk to on a daily basis, while living thousands of miles apart from each other. A part of me knew I wasn’t ready to settle down in another ordinary classroom now that I’ve finally completed high school, which is why I chose Verto. This experience combines all my goals into one. Starting the journey towards my life career, and traveling the world while doing it. It feels unreal that I’m this lucky to begin my college journey studying abroad.
👋 Name: De’Kree Antone, she/her
📍 Hometown: Rialto, California
🗺️ Verto Location(s) : Seville, Fall 2024
🛤️ Post-Verto Plan: Major in International Studies & Entrepreneurship
📘 Name of your Verto story: Scrolling to My Future
When I was a kid, my cousins were always going somewhere (they still do) and I was always jealous because I wanted to go with them and see what’s out there. I realize now that it simply it wasn’t my time then. But, my childhood prayers were answered on Saturday night scrolling away my boredom on instagram. That was until I was sparked to continue watching this one ad where I can continue in my scholarly pursuits AND travel. After that everything clicked on what I needed to reach the plane of happiness I aspired to have with my cousins. I’m so excited to really dig deeper and expand my mind to new places and experiences.
👋 Name: Cameron Penn, he/him
📍 Hometown: Atlanta, Georgia
🗺️ Verto Location(s) : Seville, Fall 2024
🛤️ Post-Verto Plan: To be decided…
📘 Name of your Verto story: Coming of Age: Season of Maturation & Refinement
Our society puts so much pressure on us -as teens-, to know what we’d like to do and to have enough confidence, drive, and willpower to pursue it for the rest of our lives. The youth are forced to subdue their curiosities, their passions, and their creativity. Everything that makes them who they truly are, all in exchange for whichever job offers the highest salary. I’ve always felt indifferent to these societal norms. I’ve always been the kid who climbed trees, and played with bugs, who questioned rules, adults, and authority. An explorer, a philosopher, a truth seeker.
Then I grew up, as all children must do, and the inevitable truth that is our world caught up with me. Responsibilities arrived left and right. I needed to find the perfect college, and the perfect major that would indubitably land me the perfect job so that I could have the perfect house, perfect car, perfect family, and perfect life. I hadn’t yet learned of the disease that perfection was.
There was no more exploring, no more truth-seeking. At the mere age of 19, I had already lost myself to the infamous rat race. My mother especially, placed an unbearable amount of pressure on me to decide what I wanted to do with my life, she stressed that there was no time to wait. So I searched, and I searched, and I searched, looking for something I thought would make her happy. To no avail. Then I decided, why not take control of my own future, why not look for something that might make me happy for a change? I remembered the unbound, free-spirited, gifted child I was. & I remembered the person that kid wanted to grow up to be. Channeling everything from all of those memories, I got on my laptop and searched for the most untraditional route for accessing higher education. Which led me to Verto.
I found Verto Education at a time when my world was crumbling. I had succumbed to pressure, I had lost faith, I was hopeless. Then Verto Education said, we’ve been looking for you. You who are curious, you who are bold, you who are adventurous, you who are hungry for knowledge. Everything I was forced to subdue, everything I had hidden from society, Verto was looking for & beckoning me in with open arms. There was nothing in the world, in that moment, that could’ve stopped me from applying.
Fast forward a few months later, I confidently tell people I’m on my way to studying abroad in Spain. The rest is history in the making. Verto truly saved me.
Don’t wait for this opportunity to join the Fall 2024 Community pass you by – Enroll today and start meeting your community!
Want to see if a Verto start to college can work for you? Apply today to get started.
