Michelle grew up and lives on Long Island in New York but traveled upstate to study at SUNY Oswego, where she majored in both adolescence education and German language and literature. As an undergrad, she also completed a summer course in Germany through a DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst) scholarship at the Ludwig Maximillian Universität (University of Munich). After that, she also did a semester abroad at the University of Graz, where she continued to study German. She has always wanted to become a teacher and is also very interested in the German language and various German-speaking cultures and decided to combine her two passions together. In college, she tutored German to other students at her school, and in her last semester of college, she was a student teacher at the Mexico Academy and Central School District, where she taught German to 7th, 8th, and 11th graders. During her time in Austria as a USTA, she hopes to learn new teaching techniques, make long-lasting friendships, and improve her German. When she is finished as a USTA, Michelle hopes to teach German back in the US and to complete her master's degree. She is so honored to teach English in Austria because she gets to live in her favorite city, Vienna, and it has been a dream of hers to teach English in a German-speaking country.