During my time at William and Mary, I studied Arabic for three years and my classes in the Arabic department were some of my absolute favorites. My professors, Driss Cherkaoui and Mona Zaki, pushed me to fall deeply in love with the language and I certainly gained a sense of humility and pride during my language learning experience. They also made me excited to come to class and to explore a future career in Middle Eastern policy analysis, national security, or even go on to be an Arabic professor myself. Through the funding provided by the Critchfield Memorial Arabic Scholarship at the school, I spent three months studying Arabic in Amman, Jordan and I will be continuing my Arabic studies abroad this summer through the State Department’s Critical Language Scholarship in Morocco. I am immensely grateful for the brilliant people I met in this program who shaped my Arabic skills, my character, and my future.
