"Understand that making mistakes is how you learn, so try to get over feelings of embarrassment that may come from saying the wrong things in your language classes. That's not failing, that's learning. Taking feedback well and understanding how and why what you said is incorrect will help you understand your target language better."
Major(s) and Certificate(s): International Studies
Language(s): German, Arabic, Farsi
Graduation Year: 2012
What have you done since graduating from UW-Madison?
Soon after graduating, I served as an AmeriCorps VISTA member with Habitat for Humanity of Wisconsin, first at the Adams-Juneau County affiliate and then at the statewide headquarters in Milwaukee. Then I entered the Trinity Fellows Program at Marquette University where I earned my master’s in International Affairs. During my graduate studies, I applied for and was awarded a position as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Germany. After one year of working alongside English teachers in two secondary schools in Freiburg, I applied to continue as an English Teaching Assistant for a second year and was awarded a position in Dresden, where I served for another ten months. At that point, I began applying for language-related employment opportunities back in the United States, and I found a position available in the Department of Global Cultures & Languages at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. I was hired as the Director of the UWL Language Resource Center, and I have been in this position since August 2019.
What motivated you to study this/these languages?
My older brother provided some initial motivation to learn German, and our family hosted an exchange student from Munich who was my brother’s age when I was in middle school. The following summer, I attended Waldsee, the German Concordia Language Village, and that really got me going on the path toward language studies in college. I was just eleven years old on September 11, 2001, but the trauma of that day and the subsequent period of American politics and foreign relations, combined with my lack of knowledge of the Arabic-speaking world and my interest in language learning led me to take Arabic at UW-Madison from freshman year on. After two semesters of Arabic, I enrolled in Farsi to expand the reach that my language skills could take me.
How have these languages enriched your life?
Learning languages has taught me so much about other cultures and my own. It’s made me a more open and adventurous person, cautioned me against making assumptions about people, cultures, and countries, and has overall enhanced my sense of curiosity and wonder toward the world in all its complexity.
What do you remember about your UW language classes? How were they different from other classes you took?
They were smaller than most of my other classes, so I got to know my classmates and instructors better than any of my other classes. In the one German class I took, I got a lot of great German music recommendations from one of my classmates. In Arabic classes, I became friends with heritage speakers of Arabic who taught me more about the colloquial Arabic dialects in comparison to the Modern Standard Arabic upon which our curriculum was based. In Farsi, I became close friends with a classmate more interested in the Iranian rock music scene than the language itself. In all of my language classes, the instructors were really great and challenged us all the time to learn more. And the fact that many of my language classes met four times per week, I spent more time thinking about languages and cultures than any other subject I studied in college.
Was there value to your out-of-classroom experiences? How did they add to your coursework?
Yes, the International Learning Community was the foundation for many of my closest friendships in college, and it was a privilege to have the opportunity to live there and participate in the monthly roundtable dinners. Studying abroad gave me my first chance to visit Germany. I had a four-hour layover in Frankfurt on my way to Alexandria, Egypt, and I took the train downtown to walk around the city a bit. I visited a flea market on the Main River and spoke Arabic with some of the vendors there. My study abroad story is rather unique in that I was in Egypt at the start of the Arab Spring and got to witness some of those events firsthand before having to return home. A few weeks later, I was in Morocco to participate in an alternative intensive Arabic study abroad program in Fes. I’ll never forget the friends I made there and the experiences I had.
How have you maintained or improved your language(s) since graduation?
It’s been a bit of a challenge to stay consistently engaged with the languages I studied, so I’ve definitely had some ups and downs in terms of maintaining my language proficiency since graduation. I think that’s natural living in a society and world dominated by English. But in the years since graduating, I’ve traveled to Germany multiple times with my family, and I also applied for and was awarded a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant grant, so I was able to spend nearly two full years in Germany. While there, I took Arabic classes at a community college in Dresden and used my language skills on a daily basis. Since returning to Wisconsin, and with the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s been more challenging to maintain my language skills, but again, that’s natural. I do my best to think in my target languages whenever I can, and I’m fortunate enough to be in a position where I can interact with one of my colleagues and her students in German. I also work with my Spanish-speaking colleagues and students, so I’ve been improving my Spanish skills over the past several years. Lately, I’ve dug up some of my old documents from Waldsee and my language classes at UW-Madison, so it’s been fun to review and appreciate just how much I have learned.
What advice do you have for current language students?
First and foremost, understand that making mistakes is how you learn, so try to get over feelings of embarrassment that may come from saying the wrong things in your language classes. That’s not failing, that’s learning. Taking feedback well and understanding how and why what you said is incorrect will help you understand your target language better. It will also help you understand how your first language structures the way you formulate thoughts and phrases, and how you need to restructure those same thoughts and phrases to conform to your target language.