How Dylan’s Job Search Turned into an Overseas Adventure

I remember the first time I saw an ad for TeamGLEAS, I was sitting on my couch watching college football looking through Graduate Assistant job listings. It was late November and most of my friends were on one of two tracks: their internships had led to full-time job offers, or they had no idea what they were doing after graduation. I was in the latter and trying desperately to have an answer to the inevitable “So what are you doing next year?” question I would be asked regularly throughout the upcoming breaks.

I clicked on the link to the website and read enough to get the idea. I could go play sports in college for another year while getting a master’s degree from one of several of universities overseas. Now seeing as my other plans were to move home and do…well, I have no idea, this seemed like an amazing avenue. I looked through the schools checking to make sure I had chances to play my sport (lacrosse) and get the master’s I wanted in Behavioral Economics.

Now I had traveled a fair amount before I started college, spending time in Egypt, Italy, France, Fiji, New Zealand, and Australia for various amounts of time and I loved experiencing new places. The only problem was I didn’t as much like visiting places as I did actually living in different countries if that makes sense. I didn’t really enjoy playing tourist as much as I did immersing myself in a different culture. Obviously, going to school makes that a bit easier said than done, but the chance to live for a year in England was highly appealing as I hadn’t been able to get out of the states for four years.

Honestly I got caught up in what I was “supposed” to be doing. In the summers I got jobs in various fields I was interested in and tried to land some prestigious internships with varying success. I went into senior year stressed about what I wanted to for the next 40 years of my life. Then I saw that I could do something that no one could claim wasn’t a good idea, and buy myself some more time to figure out what kind of career I wanted to pursue.

In March, I had a call with Lindsey offering to help me select a school that had what I needed to get me going. I informed her of the one I was interested in, and to our mutual excitement had a great conversation about how to get things going and properly move forward. TeamGLEAS connected me directly to the sport staff and off I went. A couple more video meetings and an easy application later (submitted by TeamGLEAS) and I apparently was going to graduate school in England. There were a lot of steps to complete but the guidance and constant communication kept me energized to keep moving forward.

I spent the summer as a lacrosse coach, not really doing much as I waited to get to England. About two weeks prior to departure I met one of my future teammates Will over email. I joked with my family about Will being my pre-assigned best friend as we both played lacrosse and would be living next door to each other in our apartment. We arranged out flights to land about 20 minutes from each other in London so we could catch the bus up to our school together. 

The lacrosse is different. I played for a pretty unremarkable college team in the states, switched positions upon coming over, and was still a top five player on the team. It seems to be the case for almost everyone who came over that the level of competition just isn’t the same.

What that does do though is give all of us chances to take on leadership roles on and off the field. Even being a role player on great teams can be less fulfilling than really taking on the challenge of working with players still learning the game and making them as good as players as possible. It is also the first time that I have really been living on my own. Several other people in the same boat of coming over with having almost no idea what we were doing, so we have all sort of grown into semi-functioning adults together. 

But of course part of the deal is also getting the masters degree which is a lot different that college in the US. I came from a small liberal arts college and the school I went to in England was huge in comparison. My entire class grade comes from just one or two assignments throughout the term, not lots of smaller tests or papers. That said, every masters program is different. 

Overall I can’t really imagine doing anything else at this point. I just finished up my first term and am heading home tomorrow. All my friends from school basically can’t talk to me about anything other than how much they had wished they did something like this before they got into “real life”. My friends with jobs are bored because of how monotonous their lives have become, and now that they have jobs and money they are expected to be settling down, getting their own places, and all that comes with being an “adult” when they are 23. That or my friends are stuck still trying to figure out what they want while working in dead end jobs just so they are doing something productive. I get to see a completely different part of the world that has changed the way I looked at my old lifestyle and what different things I want to do when I am finished. 

If I could do it all over again I would pick the TeamGLEAS Experience 100 times out of 100. I have been granted the opportunity of a lifetime to continue playing the sport that I love, continue my education at one of the top universities in the world, and experience a completely new culture while still being able to feel at home and speak my native language. If you don’t want to grow up yet, but want to keep moving forward in your life, going to England through TeamGLEAS should be at the top of your list.