This school year at Turlock High, amongst the senior class a number of exchange students can be found. Students from the ages of 16-17 are here from around the world to study and live out the American dream. “It is such an amazing opportunity to be able to live and study here. The academics are so different from Europe!” said exchange student Lia Strohm, from Germany.

Being an exchange student at Turlock High has a lot of advantages and opportunities. Every exchange student will automatically be put in the senior class, to get the most out of their stay in America. The brave students get to walk on stage for graduation and join in on the senior trip to Disneyland in the spring. “I’ve now gone to two American High Schools, and Turlock is, without doubt, the best! Next year, I get to take a trip down to LA with my class, without any costs!” said Victoria Schors, an exchange student from Denmark.

The process of becoming an exchange student is different for everybody. Some people have known it their whole life, while others might have decided it within the last year or two. It is a long and hard process for the application, before finally taking off from their home country.

“I actually have a quite funny story on how I ended up doing an exchange year. During the summer about 2 years ago, I saw a tik tok about a girl who had been on an exchange year. I looked more into what an exchange year was, and it just looked so much fun. And from that point on, everything went kind of fast with the applications and visa – and now I’m here, living my dream in California” said German exchange student Anna.

Being an exchange student gives students the chance to experience many new things. The students fly to the other side of the world at a very young age, to go live with some people that they do not know. Speaking a language that is not their first. “You know what they say right?; ‘exchange is not a year in your life. It is a life in a year’. We live the same life for 16 years, and leave it for one. We will always come back. But when you leave your exchange year, you never come back to that” said Lia Strohm, from Germany.

Being an exchange student in a foreign country is an experience for a lifetime, the students get opportunities that they would never normally get and they get to figure out who they really are on the other side of the world with a group of people that they barely know.