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 →