I did not come around to majoring in Hispanic Studies until my second-to-last year in college. After working at Claytor Lake State Park (in Southwestern Virginia) for a summer and encountering many Latinos with whom I conversed using Spanish learned in high school, I decided that it would be well worth my time to pick that up as my second major. After all, if Spanish is useful in a place as notoriously un-cosmopolitan as Appalachia, it would probably be useful anywhere else in the country, let alone in virtually the entire western hemisphere!
Some of my highlights as a Hispanic Studies major include trying to find my way back to Cadiz from Tarifa with two of my classmates during a summer study abroad program in southern Spain (the bus left without us), and, honestly, experiences of talking to people off-campus whenever I have needed to use Spanish to communicate.