Category Archives: Alternatives abroad

The Power of Internships: Connecting Spanish to Internship Experiences

I write this blog post as I finish my time as a Spanish major at UMass Amherst. Although I am sad that my time here is coming to an end, I can look positively on my experiences I have had, both at UMass and within the Spanish department. Although I have not had the study abroad experience, I can speak to some of the internship opportunities I have had during my time as a Spanish major. While I think that studying abroad is an amazing opportunity, I also think that internships can also have an impact on students, regardless of what they study. My hope of this blog post is to show that someone studying Spanish can have meaningful internships in which they use what they learned during their career as a Spanish major. I use two of my own internship experiences, one in Washington, D.C. and one in Amherst, MA, to show how internships can bring about meaningful connections with the Spanish major and how someone can complete a wide range of internships. Continue reading →

Where my Spanish major has brought me

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Fran Burns graduated from our program in 2015. We are happy that he has contacted us to let us know about his UMass experience, his last two years in Mexico, and his future plans.

“So you wanna study Spanish, huh?” This moment will forever stay in my mind. I was at my grandmother’s funeral my senior year of high school, and one of my grandmother’s friend, who I didn’t know, was baffled that I wanted to study Spanish. She repeatedly said “Spanish, huh?” and was completely perplexed by the idea of me studying Spanish. It started making me second guess myself since she was so concerned. I think that was one of my first times I started questioning my major. Since then I’ve gotten asked multiple times “Well, what can you do with Spanish?” and luckily there isn’t a clear answer. As a Spanish and Italian major I’ve been able to explore and consider many job opportunities. Maybe if I were a nursing, an engineering, or accounting student I wouldn’t have considered these opportunities as being realistic or making sense for me. I’m sure that for many of you Spanish is one of your passions and I can easily say it’s one of mine. There were times when I felt guilty or maybe lost about studying Spanish, thinking I should study something more practical or with a clear career goal in mind. However, I am so happy that I was spent four years studying something that I love. If it’s something you are really passionate about, you’ll find a way to incorporate it into your work or daily life Continue reading →

Study Abroad as a Student Athlete

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During the Fall semester of my Junior year, I did something that may student athletes at UMass do not do. I studied abroad. Why was this such a rare occurrence, particularly for a student athlete? For one, student athletes who receive an athletic scholarship are not permitted to go abroad during their training season and/or competition season or off season. Those who do not receive athletic scholarship can go abroad, but it is discouraged. While on the onset, this may seem very restrictive and limiting, for athletes at the Division 1 level, it does make a lot of sense. Getting in one’s best shape does not happen overnight. It requires a rigorous amount of hard training and consistency, which in my opinion (this having been influenced by personal experience) is most effective and is done at its best with the guidance of a coach, the support of one’s teammates and with the right training facilities available. While I do not regret having studied abroad as a student athlete, I did make a bit of a sacrifice when it came to my athletic performance. Continue reading →

From Study Abroad to Research: The Gradual Shift

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For a while I have known that I wanted to be a teacher, but I always struggled with which subject I would teach. After taking Spanish in middle and high school and going on a trip to Spain my junior year of high school, I knew that I wanted to pursue the Spanish language and culture more in depth. When I first came to the University of Massachusetts it was assumed that I would study abroad in a Spanish-speaking country. I mean, if I wanted to teach Spanish to others, I should have studied in a Spanish-speaking country. I should speak with natives and I should surround myself with their culture. At the beginning of my time at UMASS I wanted to study for a semester in Spain, then I decided I wanted to study for an entire academic year. However, something changed as I continued my career at UMASS. As I began to take the required education courses in order to get my license to teach, I realized that I wanted to be more on the education side of things. I became fascinated with research and how education could be used for liberation. I saw the social justice side of education as a highly important aspect of our society, and I wanted to continue to explore it. Continue reading →

All In a Day’s Walk (El Camino de Santiago)

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I walked 500 miles.

I could spend time thinking of a more playful introduction, but the sentence above represents both the banality of my life at the time and the simplicity of the accomplishment itself. From May 4th, 2015, to June 15th, 2015, I was walking. Not running, not swimming; neither driving nor flying. Walking through little towns and big cities alike on the Northern coast of Spain, from the French border to a city in Galicia called Santiago de Compostela, in the West of the Iberian Peninsula. Looking back today, I’m skeptical that it even happened or that I did it. But I did, for what it’s worth. Continue reading →

WestCoast Connection (a different integrative experience)

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Since I heard about this wonderful experience that I had in Luis’s 394 class when the Seniors came to visit, I feel that it is my responsibility to share it with everyone else so that they can to do what I did. I wasn’t able to study abroad while I was at UMass and when I signed up to do the Holyoke tutorial it just didn’t fit in my schedule. Lucky for me, I had found an alternative that my advisor deemed valid to count for my IE.

It all started when I was sitting in 394 and one of the Seniors, who came to visit and tell us about their IEs, mentioned that he got to travel for free to Spanish speaking countries over the summer. He went on to say that “Teen Tour” companies would take college students who spoke Spanish and pay for them to be a sort of counselor on these teen tours. I was immediately intrigued by the possibility of being able to travel and use Spanish for free over the summer so I went home and googled “Teen Tours”. Continue reading →

CIEE and the Auxiliar Program

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¡Hola todos!

¿Qué tal estáis? My name is Cody Small and I graduated in 2014 with a major in Spanish and a minor in Education. As I am now living and teaching in Castilla La-Mancha, Luis has asked me to share a bit about my experience here in Spain and with CIEE.

I am sure many of you have heard about the North American Auxiliar program here in Spain, but honestly even I am confused by it. I have gathered that there are more or less three types of Auxiliares here in Spain: the Ministry program, the Comunidad program, and the CIEE program. For those who are considering coming to Spain, I recommend either the Ministry or the Comunidad programs, and would warn away from the CIEE program. Let me explain a little about how CIEE works and some of the differences between my program and the others. Continue reading →

The Truth About Service Learning Abroad

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Reading “Power and Privilege”, an anthropological research paper by Michelle Camacho, has allowed me the opportunity to analyze and reflect upon my own service learning experience as a tour guide in Costa Rica this past summer. In her paper, Camacho explores power relations between mainly white, middle-upper class students, to those of Mexican migrant workers in various service-learning contexts that are meant to accompany her class on U.S.-Mexico border relations.

This paper, although much more academic in its format than other I’ve read previously, centers on some topics that I researched rather extensively before accepting my job position with Rustic Pathways; those of privilege and travel volunteerism, also known as voluntourism. Rustic Pathways is a multinational teen tour company with operations in over 19 different countries on 5 different continents. Over 75% of their travel programs are advertised as largely “community serviced based”, while many other action adventure and language-immersion based programs also include a certain amount of community service hours as well. Continue reading →

Teen Tours: Your Opportunity to Test Drive Working Abroad

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Have you ever dreamed of traveling or working abroad?

What if I were to tell you that you already may have what it takes to embark on a life changing journey overseas, and that you were actually going to get paid to do it? Landing yourself a job with an teen tour company could set you up with a full air-fare, room and board, and even a job abroad, but of of course, there’s a catch. You have to willing to work for a majority of the time throughout your stay, without much time off. The teen tour industry, much like the booming study abroad industry, has also been on the rise since the ’80’s. Continue reading →