A Geoduck among Huskies
Today is Friday, marking the end of Week Six. I'm sort of shocked and amazed at how quickly this quarter is passing, but it's great at the same time. It means I've been busy, if not totally productive, even though there is still lots to do before the quarter and the year end in June.
I received some great news this week that I am very excited about! At the end of March I applied to study in an Evergreen consortium program with the University of Washington in Seattle at the Jackson School of International Studies. I sent an email to the program coordinator to follow up on the status of my application and he wrote back telling me I have been accepted and will be receiving a formal letter next week! This is so completely fantastic!! I am from Seattle, so I get to move back to my city and do my senior year at UW studying upper division Spanish language and Latin American Studies classes while representing Evergreen.
The main reason why this is such great news is that I have to begin studying a third language in order to meet graduate school requirements for a Masters in Spanish. My research has revealed that pretty much every graduate program in Spanish across the country requires reading and writing proficiency in a third language, preferably Portuguese or French (because apparently learning a second language isn't challenging enough). For me it makes perfect sense to start studying Portuguese with a focus on Latin America since it's the language spoken in Brazil with a population of nearly 200 million people!! There are many similarities between Spanish and Portuguese, so hopefully the transition won't be too terribly confusing.
This opportunity is going to be invaluable in helping me to prepare for post-graduate studies. I feel so fortunate to have been selected as a representative from The Evergreen State College. It's really clever how the partnership works between the two schools. I won't be graduating from UW, rather all my credits I earn in Seattle will be transferred back to Evergreen and applied towards my Bachelor of Arts degree here. ¡Felicitaciones para mi!