I came to William and Mary with plans on majoring in English and Philosophy. When registering for Fall classes, I didn’t get all of the classes I wanted because I was a freshman of course and needed a class to fulfill the 12 credit requirement. All the classes were pretty much taken except for a couple and I chose Professor Greenia’s Advanced Grammar & Composition class because that was the only one I thought I could somewhat survive in. It was all serendipitous. After the first day of class I knew that I made the right decision and it’s been a great adventure since then. When studying abroad in Spain, I was constantly reminded again of how fortunate I was to be studying Hispanic Studies. I was reading articles for my research paper at the La Caleta beach in the middle of June and an elderly couple next to me asked me what had to be so important that I had to bring my laptop to the beach. I told them about my research on religious popular culture and they started sharing their opinions and experiences about it while also sharing their snacks with me and introducing me to their family. Hispanic Studies has a beating heart and I’m so thankful for having been a part of it.
During the summer I will be working as a junior fellow in the Hispanic Division of the Library of Congress and in the Fall I will be starting the MA program in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.