I entered the university as a biology major. I took the Spanish placement exam, and realized I would have the time to complete a major in Spanish, as well. Spanish was, for a long time, the “icing” on the cake. Biology, and then biochemistry, and then political science made up the cake itself. The standards that had been set for me didn’t register “just Spanish” as an adequate use of my time. But when I took time off for various reasons, including the fact that I hadn’t settled on a “cake” and couldn’t waste any more time changing my studies, I also realized that, just as high school was made to be an unnecessarily high-pressure environment, my undergraduate career was becoming a stressful game of squeezing in as many requirements as possible. I wasn’t taking courses I liked. I was taking ones that would “count.” When I returned, I knew that I both wanted to enrich myself and move out of undergraduate in a timely fashion. I dropped my secondary major, and began exploring the depths of the course catalog, seeking out classes that were of personal interest or that would compliment my studies.

I love science. I really do. But when it was my major, my “cake,” I could close the book and stop thinking about methylation for the next two days until I was back in lecture. I could power through a set of problems on an online program and “Submit,” never to see it again. In hindsight, that cake was empty calories. It was energy for the sake of energy, but it wasn’t personally “nutritious”: it was not making me better as a person.

Studying Spanish has given me another lens to view the world through. It is a varied lens, with speakers of the language located all over the world. I have a great respect and admiration for the way that our language reflects our culture and vice versa, and studying Spanish has shown me just how much there is to learn from studying another language. In particular, I’ve enjoyed my literature courses because they’ve shown me that my values are not inherent to human nature but rather are constructed by the culture I live in. The literature we read was about love and romance and there was passion in the writing. I don’t say this to discount American literature but the poems and prose I read made me feel more connected cross-culturally via common experiences and emotions.

By eventually selecting Spanish as a major, as my cake, I became more interested in the lives of people all over the world. I wanted to know how their culture manifested itself in their language and dialects. I wanted to ‘open another door’ so to speak, and be able to communicate with people from whom I would normally be cut off. I hope to use not only the language, but my new appreciation for the shared experience of humanity of people everywhere, in order to make my own world a better place for people to live in.

I don’t know yet what exactly it is that I want to dedicate my life to. Probably, not one single thing, but to pursue avenues of constructive community-building, in whatever form that may take. I intend to dedicate my life to service, and I don’t think that I can enter that into jobs.com with much success. But I have faith that I will find a career that is rewarding to myself and my community.