After living in Italy and studying French and Latin in middle school and while studying French and Spanish in high school in Portage, MI, I started to consider languages as one of my passions. In fact, watching movies and TV shows and reading Harry Potter books in French and Spanish eventually became one of my hobbies. I had a lot of exposure to Romance languages as a result, and it has always been extremely interesting for me to find similarities and differences, and to notice patterns therein. And so I very vividly remember checking the list of majors of every university to which I considered applying, to see if it had a major in Romance languages. While I did not have a set major in mind coming into college, this was in fact one of the reasons that I chose to attend the University of Michigan.

My time at Michigan has been a wonderful journey. One of my first experience with the RLL department was research in Spanish phonetics with Nick Henriksen my freshman year. Incidentally, towards the end of the first semester, I got up the nerve and declared a major in Romance Languages and Literatures. Later that summer, I had an extraordinary opportunity to study abroad in Paris. Sophomore fall, I joined the board of Italianissimo, which gave me a chance to practice my Italian, as well as to help other students improve theirs. Over the course of my time at Michigan, I have taken courses in Spanish, French and Catalan on topics ranging from culture to linguistics and literature, including a graduate class on Don Quixote.

My interests, however, don’t stop at languages: I was lucky to have been able to complement my major in Romance Languages and Literatures with a major in Computer Science, along with a Business Administration minor. Taking classes in these three different fields has allowed me to stand in the middle of technology and humanities and to approach problems from unique perspectives. These experiences, such as being a TA for EECS 183 and EECS 281 since sophomore fall, have been eye-opening, as I have been able to combine what I learned both inside and outside the classroom. And I definitely did not think, at the beginning of my freshman year, that I would end up where I am now, at the end of my senior year.

This summer, I start my journey in the real world by moving to San Francisco, California as I begin working on the Productivity Apps team at Apple. I am extremely excited and cannot wait to see what lies ahead for me! I discovered while studying abroad that U of M does not end in Ann Arbor, so I look forward to meeting other Wolverines wherever I go. I am forever grateful for the amaizing time I have had at Michigan, which I will never forget, as I strongly believe that the journey is just as important as the destination.