T HE
T R AV E L I N G
Learner
How Foundation dollars played a part in supporting Abigail Turner’s hunger to learn in and outside the classroom.
This past spring, 22-year-old Abigail Turner graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia, or Mizzou, with a bachelor’s degree in agriculture education and leadership. Beyond her degree, Abigail walked away from college with an impressive resume and passport full (as in not a blank page to spare) of stamps. “I’m a Type Seven on the Enneagram scale, which means I get bored easily and love adventure,” she adds. On campus, Abigail held several leadership positions within her chapter, Alpha Delta. She served as 1 Homecoming creative director, academic chair, standards senior member and chapter president. Despite recently graduating, she cannot wait to visit her chapter’s facility again. She laughs, “I’m sure our [facility director] thought she’d never get me out of there!” Abigail traveled far and wide off campus. Her hunger to explore began the day after her high school graduation. She traveled through Mizzou to Australia and New Zealand. After her freshman year of college, she studied in southern France for nine weeks and lived and worked with a family on their lavender farm. Of the experience, she says, “I remember staying up all night practicing sentences in French with Google Translate so I could talk to my host siblings the next morning at breakfast. Through hard work and jumping into the uncomfortable, I was able to grow in unexpected ways and truly come home a better person.” Shortly after France, Abigail set off to Thailand’s
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