My first year in Vermont
A year after moving to the US – what I learned, where it got hard, and why I still wouldn't trade this year for anything.
It’s been over a year since I moved to Vermont to combine cross-country skiing and school as a student-athlete at UVM. Time for an honest look back.
The deep end
When I got here, I didn’t know a single person. No training group, no friends, no real sense of how daily life here actually works. A mix of excitement and, honestly, uncertainty too – I genuinely didn’t know what I was walking into.
On the training side, things clicked faster than I expected: I settled into the training group quickly and was genuinely surprised by how high the level is in college – both in training and in races. Everything at school was manageable too, actually pretty easy – studying in English clicked faster than I thought it would. What I still underestimated was how different even everyday conversation feels when English isn’t your first language. But then you also realize that even in German you don’t actually use a lot of specialized vocabulary day to day – so it was more a matter of getting used to it than a real problem.
What actually wears you down
The biggest adjustment wasn’t the training – it was the mental load. A day of school here simply pulls more out of you than a normal work week back in Germany ever did, and on top of that you’re rebuilding everything from scratch in a brand-new country. At the start you just don’t know where to go grocery shopping, you don’t know the stores, and every everyday decision has to be made a lot more consciously. You have to think things through and go looking for things, instead of just running on autopilot through routines you already know by heart. That eats into mental capacity you’d normally have budgeted for something else.
The low points, honestly
The first few weeks went really well. I figured I could just keep training like that and even add a bit more – which actually worked out fine too. Add to that the US college culture: going out with the group now and then is just part of it here – but it can take you out if you don’t manage it.
One moment stands out in particular: Halloween. The whole group was fired up, costumes ready, one last night out before the final winter build-up started. Typical fall weather – rainy, cold. The next morning was an interval session, and besides me and Tabor, everyone else in the group was already sick. Two days later I was too, and two weeks were completely gone. Later in the season, things just never quite clicked: I could still perform well from time to time, but between a few bouts of illness I wasn’t fully happy with my results overall – and I’ve definitely got some unfinished business for this year, which is probably a good thing too.
Looking back, it wasn’t dramatic, but it shaped me. This year taught me very concretely where my limits are and how my body reacts to situations I’d never been in before – on another continent, under new conditions, without the usual support system behind me.
What stays with me
Despite all of it: this was a year that made me noticeably stronger, physically and mentally. The time with the group here is genuinely a lot of fun, both in training and everything around it – even if you sometimes have to grit your teeth at school. But you don’t get the easy years first, and that exact mix is something I wouldn’t want to have missed.
