When School Calls You Back

Jeffrey Bores
Age: 44
Attended: St. Olaf College
Program of study: Travel study trips through St. Olaf’s Center for Lifelong Learning
Lives: Minneapolis
Fun fact: Bores is an attorney but also owns the taraNa Yoga Studio in south Minneapolis

Sometimes it isn’t just education that calls a student—the world can beckon as well. While attending St. Olaf College in the mid-eighties, Jeffrey Bores had the opportunity to study in the Middle East for a term; he traveled to Israel, Turkey, Greece, Egypt, and Italy. He later attended William Mitchell College of Law and eventually embarked on a career as an attorney, but the thrill of combining travel and education never quite went away.

Fortunately, Bores found he didn’t have to go back to school to quench his desire for a semester abroad. Although he traveled after college, he yearned for excursions with more academic rigor and began to regularly sign up for study travel trips through St. Olaf College’s Center for Lifelong Learning. The lectures and tours at spots around the world are led by St. Olaf professors and are open to anyone, even those who aren’t alums

In 2001, Bores spent thirty-five days on a trip that started in Switzerland with briefings from United Nations representatives about world health issues, and then moved on to Egypt, India, Nepal, and China, where he learned about religion, art, and even calligraphy. Two years later, he visited Vietnam and Cambodia for three weeks for an intensive education about the French and American occupation from the 1800s to the 1970s.

In 2005, he went back to the Middle East, nearly replicating the trip he’d taken as a young student, but learning more about contemporary politics and economic development. This past summer he went to Moscow for lectures about history, literature, art, and ballet.

“I’ve never been a lay-on-the-beach kind of person with my vacations,” he says. “It all comes down to how you want to spend your time off from work. For me, I want to grow as an adult learner and as a citizen of the world. I believe I’m never truly out of school.”

The St. Olaf program is ideal, Bores says, because the college has resources that allow a vigorous academic program that can be done in a shorter amount of time than the usual months-long semester. Since professors lead the trips, they’re able to give insight into politics and the arts, while also connecting travelers with academics in other countries.

Bores is keen to continue his journeys and plans to take a St. Olaf trip at least once every two years. “One of the luxuries of practicing law is that there are always new things to learn,” he says. “It always requires more study, and it’s wonderful to extend that kind of thinking beyond what I do professionally.”