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| Vol. 17, No. 14 | Dec. 11, 1997 |
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| Vol. 17, No. 14 | Dec. 11, 1997 |
"It's like the Miss America pageant," he says of the final day of interviews for the coveted scholarships. "The committee spent the morning and afternoon interviewing candidates, then they shepherded us into this wonderful room, gave us one of those 'everybody's a winner' speeches and called out the names.
"Since they called my name, I have felt as if I'm leading the life of another person."
Two days later, leafing though the Baltimore Sun and other newspapers, reading about his accomplishment, he insists, "This is like reading about someone else's life."
But those who know de Lorenzo aren't at all surprised and think his life has been somewhat unusual up to this point, anyway. For example, he completed high school at Archmere Academy in three years and was awarded a DuPont Scholarship to study at UD when he was a high school junior. He deferred that for a year in favor of studying in Germany as an exchange student.
Since he's been at the University, he's completed the requirements for a bachelor's degree in cognitive science at the same time he's completed a master's in linguistics- again in three years, with time off in between for extensive and interesting travel.
"The University has allowed me to pretend that I'm a graduate student," he says. "It's been great. I love conversing with the people in the linguistics department. Nowhere am I more aware of my shortcomings than when I am talking with them.
"Bill Frawley has shepherded me, and Dean Heyward Brock has been very flexible in allowing me to travel. Others to whom I am in debt are Colin Phillips, Bill Idsardi, Roberta Golinkoff and Barbara Landau. And, I owe a huge debt to all of the people in the Honors Program. I would never have come to UD if it hadn't been for the Honors Program."
He's worked in migration research in Vienna, coordinated voting for refugees in Bosnia and Liberia, and had time to have what he calls an "existential crisis," which he resolved by living with a 90-year-old monk in the Swiss Alps.
His first refugee voting job took him to Turkey, Serbia and Slovakia, Croatia and Sarajevo. In West Africa, he ventured into parts of Liberia where international staff had not been since 1993.
"People were overwhelmed to see us," he says. "I would say the experience was very different. You know, when you're the only one not carrying a machine gun, it's actually very different. One of my colleagues almost died from malaria; one of our trucks hit a land mine; there was a coup in the country next door; and we couldn't get our flight home...."
Throughout all of it, the one thing that kept coming back to de Lorenzo was his love of linguistics.
"It survived the lure; it survived the money. By the time I finished my second assignment in Liberia, I could have kept working in that line all my life. I had the contacts; I was set. But, at heart, I knew I was a linguist."
That fate was sealed after a summer at a linguistics institute at Cornell University.
"It's my destiny to become a linguist. It's where I feel most comfortable," he says.
De Lorenzo first discovered this love in high school. "I really enjoyed grammar exercises. I found them very sexy," he says.
"I became interested in how the mind works. What is it that allows people to learn language? Language is the human's most salient quality. It's like a little black box in the mind somewhere. Learning language is not like memorizing facts; it's this other independent region of your mind."
That interest, coupled with an always-present "longing to go abroad," made linguistics a natural choice.
"Even as a child I wanted to go abroad. I have great motivation to assimilate. It's always been a puzzle to my mother."
For her part, mother Ann Draper, administrative assistant in the College of Arts and Science, is happy to have her son going to England. It seems much safer than the other places he's been.
Once there, he will work toward a B. Phil degree-a master's degree in philosophy.
"It will build nicely on the work I've done here," he explains. "My subfield is semantics-formal semantics and that has its roots in analytical philosophy, the philosophy of language and formal logic. Before I do my formal graduate work in linguistics, this will give me a solid base in those areas."
Meantime, he continues to be in awe of this prize and continues to make plans for this summer when he and UD sophomore David Kovara will do volunteer work in an orphanage in Kenya.
"I met the priest who runs the orphanage, and he told me how many babies are born there to HIV-positive mothers. Seventy-five percent of those babies, who may not even have AIDS, are just dumped in trash cans. His goal is to save all of those children-to find homes for the ones who are well and to provide care for the ones who are sick. I want to help, too. It will be good to do something nonpolitical for a change."
-Beth Thomas
Photo by Robert Cohen
