Monthly Archives: April 2014

The Journey as a Spanish Major

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            During the midst of my last year of high school, like most students I was eager to get out. Graduating from high school seemed like such a big milestone at the time. I would finally be able to make the decision as to where I wanted to live, and where I wanted to study. I was one of those students who applied to ten or eleven different universities. I had my heart set on a few, but still applied to others just to see if I’d get in. Ironically enough, at this point in time UMASS was my ‘safety school.’ My top pick was the University of Vermont. I loved the very liberal atmosphere, and the education program was so well developed. After receiving my acceptance letter and going to an accepted students’ day, I determined that it would not be financially possible to attend there. Continue reading →

3 Pieces of Advice for Spanish Majors

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As I finish up the remaining weeks of my senior semester at UMass, I have taken time to reflect on my Spanish major. To reflect on what it has meant for me to be a second language learner and the interconnection between the world, communication and language learning. I have learned many things over the past 8 semesters and I want to share the three main points for students thinking about becoming a Spanish major, or who want to know what to expect the next few years of their lives. So I leave you with three important pieces to remember… Continue reading →

Why Choose Service Learning?

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Why choose Service Learning? I chose Service Learning because I was unable to go abroad but it was actually the best decision I have ever made. At first I was unsure what my opportunities would be or if there would be something I could fit into my already crazy schedule. Luis had introduced the entire class to Ellen Correa who works in the CESL department and I decided to set up a meeting with her in order to talk about my options. There are tons of service learning options offered by the university but not all of them apply to the Spanish major. Ellen told me about being a liaison for Education 377. In order to become a liaison it is necessary to have already taken the Education 377 course which I had done a year previously. In order to be a liaison you must do three things. First you must attend and facilitate discussions in the 377 course as a TA would. Second you must attend a Leadership in Service Learning class taught by Ellen. And finally you must continue your service learning experience at the site you worked at previously in Education 377. Continue reading →

ELL And Beyond

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All through high school I worked as a peer tutor, first for students that were from the area and needed assistance in basic high school courses like history and math. These courses were not the main focus of my interests but I understood them well enough, as well as the basic way I myself understood them and how others could use my techniques to learn, and I felt that I could apply that in a manner that would benefit the peers I worked and studied with. As my interest in Spanish began to develop (French and Spanish were the only classes offered at my school and we were only allowed to take one or the other; any other languages I took were through a newly implemented online program, and I sampled a little of Chinese and Italian) a favorite Spanish teacher of mine that had noticed my aptitude for languages kept approaching me and asking me to tutor kids that were having a hard time in her Spanish classes. It was about eighth grade when I started working with a seventh grader who needed help specifically with his Spanish. Continue reading →

My Major and Me

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My Experience with the Spanish Major

As a freshman at UMass Amherst, I did not have plans of using Spanish as a big part of my life moving forward. I knew Spanish, with two grandparents from the Basque Country in the north of Spain and a number of aunts, uncles, and cousins still living there and keeping in touch, I had heard the language a lot growing up and had a sufficient enough grasp on it to take honors and AP classes throughout high school. It was a language that I like to pull out when around my friends, mostly white and middle class like me, to show off the fact that I was in some way more “cultured” than them, whatever that means. But my plans at UMass were not dependent on in, and certainly not my plans afterwards. I figured I could take classes, minor in it, and have it as a bonus on my resume, sure, but Political Science was really interested me, and whatever I could use that for later.

Sophomore year was when I actually switched my primary major to Spanish, and put Political Science as my secondary. Honestly, though, even at this point it wasn’t because I fully understood or appreciated the major for what it was, it was for reasons of convenience. Continue reading →

Choosing a Destination and Why I Chose Bilbao

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My name is Joe, I am a graduating senior in the class of 2014 studying Political Science and Spanish here at UMass, and in the spring semester of 2013, I travelled and studied abroad in Bilbao, a city in the northern Basque Country in Spain. Looking back on the trip, it was without a doubt one of the greatest experiences of my life, and the five months I spent in Bilbao, I made connections with not only people from the city but with the city itself in a way that makes me still today feel as though Bilbao is in some way my city. I was not there very long in the scale of my life so far, but that does not mean that the city and its people didn’t have a profound impact on my life; because it most certainly did. The thing is, though, that I am not writing this to tell about how much I love Bilbao or any single person I encountered while I was there. I would love to do that, I would love to just sit and recount my experiences one by one as a way to relive them through stories, but I am actually writing this to express that the reason that I chose to study in Bilbao is perhaps a silly sounding reason, but that there is no such thing as a silly or wrong reason to choose a destination for studying abroad. For the most part, I believe that, wherever one ends up studying will be exactly where they were supposed to be and that they will have an awesome time as long as they are open to truly experience the new cultures. Continue reading →

My friend, Jake.

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I have been struggling with this blog post for a couple days now. I want to share the experience I had with Jake with all of you, but I am having the hardest time finding the right words to describe my sentiments. As I mentioned in one of my homework posts, I met Jake (20 years old) at the homeless shelter I have been volunteering at. We clicked and became friends right from the start.

When I first started volunteering at the start of this semester, Jake had no contact with either of his parents (they are divorced and live in different states) and had been a guest at the homeless shelter for several months. He was on probation and participated in mandated community service every week in order to lift his probation.  No parental support, no job, no car, no house…not at all an easy life. Continue reading →

Why Spanish?

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“You’re a Spanish major. You must be fluent, right?”

 I receive this question a lot nowadays, when I explain to loving family members or friends what my course of study at UMass has been. How I am a primary Spanish major. And how, no, contrary to popular belief, I am not fluent. Far from it.

There is something incredibly disheartening about admitting that to oneself. That no matter how much you have studied, or the time that you have poured into the major, or the number of literature reviews turned in, that you are simply not fluent and perhaps never will be. And what is profoundly strange about studying a language is that there are millions, hundreds of millions of people across the planet who are infinitely more skilled in the Spanish language because it is their heritage language—these skills they honed on the playgrounds and in school rooms and in thousands of bedtime stories con sus padres. By age 10, barely anyone knows about the realist theory of international relations or how to properly run gel electrophoresis—those things you learn when you study for a Political Science or Biology degree. But there are millions of ten year olds who can speak effortless Spanish, whose tongues don’t tap against their teeth in that oh-so-gringo way and who don’t mix up feminine and masculine pronouns of a score of household items. Continue reading →

Reflections on the Importance of Service-Learning

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I decided very early on in my high school career that teaching was the job for me. When I got to college and decided to be a Spanish major, I thought that I would enter the graduate program for foreign language teachers at UMass and teach Spanish to high school students. However, my plans were disrupted when I found out this program was in redesign and may not be available to me when I graduate. I knew there were other programs I could apply to at different universities, but my heart was set on UMass. I felt disappointed and scared for what my future would entail, and it was too late to switch majors. Why did I major in Spanish if I couldn’t be a Spanish teacher in the future? Continue reading →