My name is Angela, but my mom calls me Ángela (there's an accent over that big A, making this name sound like ' ON-hey-la '). Seriously. My mom calls me by my Spanish name. That’s the kind of impact the Spanish language has had on me over the last 7 years. I have cousins who teach it, teachers who help me to experience it, and a family who never gets tired of hearing it. After I started learning Spanish in the 7th grade, I was excited to expand my vocabulary to one day be able to have a legitimate conversation with someone in Spanish. I studied my little middle school butt off, and it paid off. I held a 100% all throughout middle school. I don’t say this to brag, I say this to prove how dedicated I was – and still am – to this subject.
Once I hit high school, I began to practice having small, personal conversations with one of my bilingual cousins. My mom thought this meant I could easily understand the entire Spanish language, as she would frequently ask me to translate conversations, say, that two Spanish speaking women were having in front of us in the line at the supermarket. “Mom!” would usually be my response, as I looked at her with disbelief that she had made such a request. However, I can’t deny that I would try to eavesdrop a little bit, just to see if I could make anything out.
While Spanish was a big part of my high school life, so was Video Production, which ended up becoming my major. Up until very recently, I was prepared to make video my whole life, with room for little else. Over winter break, my mom (surprise!) sat me down with a very serious look on her face. She brought up the words “grad school” which I immediately shut down, since video majors don’t really need to look into graduate school in order to obtain a good profession down the road. But video work was not what she was talking about. Her idea was for me to graduate with what I have in place as of now, which are a Video Production major and Spanish Language minor. She then suggested I take a couple years at grad school to obtain a teaching degree, and, you guessed it; go teach kids how to speak Spanish. I’ll admit, when the words flew out of her mouth, I didn’t love them. However, after I spent a good 3 or 4 minutes thinking about it, I fell in love with the idea. Don’t get me wrong; filmmaking has always been another big passion of mine that I still plan to pursue. I’m not looking to go to Los Angeles (too commercialized) or New York City (too…hectic!), but want to keep looking into editing as a side job, perhaps. But teaching kids the language that’s become such a passionate part of my life? That’s a no brainer. Thanks, mom.
I just finished applying to the study abroad program in Toledo, Spain for 5 weeks this upcoming summer. The above paragraphs may have been included in my essay. If given the opportunity, I especially look forward to interacting and speaking with my host family and learning about their culture. Culture! An aspect of the Spanish world I never truly appreciated until recently, while learning about it in the 200 level series this year. It’s so incredibly great to not be ignorant about how people in Spain and other Spanish speaking countries live their lives. I can only assume that studying in Spain will not only prepare me better for the rest of my college career, but will also fuel my passion to teach children/teenagers the magic of knowing another language. Mmm magical.
For now I'm just crossing my fingers and waiting on those reference letters...yikes.
Also, it would be greatly appreciated if none of my media professors knew about this, thanks.
