After working at the orphanage, Pierce jumped continents.

He backpacked around Europe for a month, hopping from hostel to hostel, before finding a home in England at a Christian study center where he stayed for a month.

It was there that Pierce says his “growing up” happened, adding the appropriate emphasis with finger quotes.

Pierce says he had been frustrated with his Presbyterian upbringing before his time in England.

“I had a lot of doubts and questions that pissed me off about religion,” Pierce says. “It was [like] the Co-op with religion. It was a stimulating time, where the transformation happened.”

“I learned a lot of myself and Christianity and reevaluated [it],” he adds. “Instead of blaming Jesus Christ or myself, I came to see the bigger picture. I was able to step back.”

Pierce says he had time to think while he was abroad and that he returned home more laid-back than when he left.

“When you’re here in class life’s going so fast and you can’t reflect that much,” he says. “Damn papers are killer. They own you...I worked out all the frustration I had with school.”

TEACH THEM WELL

After Pierce returned from Morocco for his senior year, his teaching responsibilities intensified.

During the last semester of UTEP, every student is required to teach classes. Pierce taught 10th grade world history and 11th grade U.S. history at Excel High School in South Boston. He says the school never desegregated itself, and it has a lot of racial tension and “a lot of need.”

“From February 2 to May 14, I was Mr. Pierce,” he says, adding that effective teaching was an “amazingly difficult thing to learn.”

“I had so many students who just gave up,” he says. “It’s about the tone you set. Certain problems you can avoid if you set up fair discipline.”

Pierce says this past semester’s teaching shifted his schedule. His roommates would go out to party on a weeknight, but Pierce would tell them he had school the next day, for which he had to wake up at 5 or 6 a.m. And he was still mentoring on Saturdays.

As for next year, Pierce will be teaching high school history at an international School in Hong Kong—a position he obtained with the help of the Office of Career Services.