Meg Kaupp

[I wanted to start learning German] because of my family history. We had a bunch of family documents in German, and it was like a code to crack. I was an exchange student [in Germany] in high school, so I was gone for my junior year, and I got a degree in German and medical anthropology in college. It’s really useless. Yes, useless. I know. Then, I had a Fulbright and went to Germany for a year, which was [when I] met my husband. I ended up staying [in Germany] for four years. That’s where we got married, actually, and that’s where our wedding presents still are. I’ve been married for twenty years, and they’re sitting in my in-laws’ house. 

We came back [to the U.S.] for graduate school. I had a scholarship, and I deferred it [in order to stay in Germany] for as long as I could. [The university] finally said, “If you don’t use the scholarship, we’re going to take it away.” So then we came back. While I finished my master’s degree, my husband did a master’s in law. He didn’t have his Juris Doctor degree from an American university — he had it from a German university — so he [had to write] the New York State Bar Association in July 2001. Once 9/11 happened, it pushed back his green card application, as well as the results for the bar exam. So by the time that all went through, I had gone ahead and gotten a job. I thought, “I’ll just teach for one year until we move back [to Germany].” The laugh is on me.