I transferred to this University from a small community college in Springfield during my Junior year. If you didn’t know already, Springfield is a city  heavily populated by Puerto Ricans. I was born in Puerto Rico and brought to the United States at the age of two. I have been surrounded by other Puerto Ricans all my life. Therefore, when I sat in Worcester’s dining common having dinner with a group of friends, I was unsettled due to the following experience. There was a lot of laughter and conversation at the table. I saw a student walk into the dining common in search of someone. He was holding a pen and notebook in his hand. I accidently made eye contact and he took that as an invitation to walk towards my table. He apologized for interrupting our conversation and proceeded to ask us if we would take a few minutes to fill out his questionnaire. My friend who was sitting across from me decided to help him. While she was filling out the questionnaire, the man stared at me for a few seconds before asking me,       “What are you?”

“What are you?” It threw me off guard. I didn’t know what to respond, therefore I replied with the obvious, “I am a human being.” “No, no what are you? You look different.”  I noticed he had genuine curiosity towards me. “Uh, I am Puerto Rican,” I replied. Before we were able to enter into a deep conversation, my friend returned the signed papers back to him. He thanked us for our time and left the area. I sat there in deep thought for a few moments while his words echoed in the back of my mind. This encounter led me to explore more about my own culture and ethnicity. I have noticed that I am considered the minority at UMass Amherst. It wasn’t until I changed my major to Spanish that I started to connect with other Latinos on campus. At first, I didn’t think I could contribute to anything during classroom discussions. But halfway through the semester, I started to realize that I had a unique perspective to share with others. I used to compare myself to others based on how proficient they sounded when they spoke in Spanish. For example, I thought that people who spoke with the VOS structure were trying to sound smart. This showed me that I felt intimidated by people from other Spanish speaking countries because of the way they spoke Spanish. I learned through some Spanish linguistic courses that my Spanish is not the only form of Spanish spoken in the world. There are different accents and grammar structures that other Spanish speakers use. In addition, I have been able to learn about my own cultural biases and how it affected my interaction with other people.

I had something special to contribute to the UMass culture because of my Puerto Rican Spanish. Also, I am not the only Puerto Rican in the United States that feels this way. There are people in my culture that can’t speak the language and feel like they don’t belong in the Puerto Rican culture because of it. This is just digging the surface of the problems that my people face in the United States.

In conclusion, attending this University has helped me open my eyes to the cultural differences not only among people from other cultures, but even people from my own culture. I know I have a lot to contribute to the world because of my own background and experiences from living in a Puerto Rican household. I am grateful that I switched to a Spanish major because it has been enriching experience. I have been able to improve my own Spanish, learn about the injustices that happen in the Spanish speaking world and embrace my Latina background.
Since I took other courses in different departments prior to changing my major, I have a background of knowledge to support me in my Spanish major. This is why I advise students to take courses in other departments outside of their own majors. Some of my favorite classes were Introduction to Interpersonal Communication, Intensive Chinese, Introduction to Linguistics and Translation in Cross Cultural Communication. All these courses allowed me to think beyond my own culture and think more about the cultural diversity at UMass.