As a freshman undergraduate student at Dartmouth, I took a year of Latin, in which grammar and translation was the focus, and I excelled. I also discovered the field of linguistics and fell in love with it. As a sophomore, I returned to my Spanish studies and went on a language study abroad to Puebla, Mexico where I lived with a host family and took classes at La UPAEP. I had studied Spanish in a classroom for years, but my textbooks and drilled lessons did not culturally prepare me for my time abroad living with a host family and navigating a foreign city. I realized being good at grammar and translation was not enough. I needed real-world skills to help me navigate my new environment successfully. My time in Mexico helped me grow in my confidence in speaking the language.

As a junior, I received a fellowship to live and teach abroad in Cabarete in the Dominican Republic. I again found myself in a position of vulnerability, having to adapt to yet another culture and a very different Spanish than what I already knew. As a foreigner, I had to develop trust with my students, and in order to do that, I needed to learn to communicate not only with coherent grammar but also with social competence. This took patience, effort, perseverance and humility. I ended up extending my fellowship from 3 months to 5 months in order to continue building upon the work that I had started.

After my work in the Dominican Republic, I returned to Dartmouth to continue my studies in both linguistics and Spanish, graduating with a major in linguistics and a minor in Latin American and Hispanic Literature. The upper-level Spanish courses I took for my minor after my study abroad which were conducted entirely in Spanish included:

• Advanced Spanish Language: A Cultural Approach

• Intro to Hispanic Studies: 18th & 19th Centuries

• Writing Spanish

• Modernismo & Vanguardia

• History of the Spanish Language

• Latin American & Latino Women

• Mass Media in Latin America

After graduating Dartmouth, I have continued to seek out opportunities to further develop my language skills. I have returned to Mexico and have spent over a month in Puerto Rico, which is where my husband's family lives. 

We have raised our children with both English and Spanish in our home. We Latin dance, cook Puerto Rican food, read in Spanish, and watch Spanish TV shows together. The language is no longer something I simply study; it is a part of who I am.