I spent this past fall for my off term interning as an assistant teacher in a first grade classroom at home in New Jersey. While friends and family were confused at first how any college student could be home from September through December, any confusion I had about what I wanted to do once I graduate has since disappeared.

Teaching has become my passion, and I am extremely excited to spend the next two years taking more classes to bolster my knowledge of educating. I happily woke up every morning at 7am and my job never got boring, not something any college intern can say! As much as I taught my class of 16 students, they taught me just as much, if not more, about the art of teaching. My mentor teacher was also extremely helpful in guiding and supporting me throughout my time in her classroom.

This winter I am taking two education courses at Dartmouth, one called Development in the Exceptional Child and the other Language Acquisition. It will be interesting to see all of the connections I find between my readings and my experience this fall. As a side note, Dartmouth offers two great options for anyone interested in education or teaching. There is an education minor that you can earn as well as a teaching certification program that you can apply to and get certified within your four years at Dartmouth. I currently plan to take advantage of both options!

This past spring I spent ten weeks in Buenos Aires, Argentina on the Spanish Department Foreign Study Program (FSP) with fifteen other Dartmouth students.  The experience was absolutely amazing! While there, we took three classes at an Argentine university (UADE), lived with host families, and experienced culture events every week ranging from tango class to riding horses in the countryside to learning about Borges.  One of my favorite parts of the program was a week long vacation in the middle to travel wherever we wanted in the gorgeous country. I was lucky enough to see Iguazu Falls (waterfalls that are more than three times the size of Niagara!), the glaciers down in the southern Patagonia region, and even to travel to “the end of the world” to the southern most city of Ushuaia.

While in Argentina, we tasted many new foods and all fell in love with empanadas.  If you haven’t ever had an empanada, I highly recommend it!  Imagine a small-scale calzone filled with ham, cheese, beef, chicken or vegetables but with a flakier crust.  This past week, my group got back together for a reunion and cooking lesson with the professor that traveled with us in the spring.  While we are all willing to admit our empanadas were not quite as delicious as what we remembered, it was such a nice evening to catch up with friends, freshen up our Spanish speaking skills (as to not let it get too rusty) and learn to make something that will always remind us of our time in Argentina.

I am a huge supporter of studying abroad in college and think it really helped me to mature and become more independent.  I learned so much about myself while abroad and have a slightly better appreciation for other cultures after immersing myself for ten weeks.  Dartmouth makes it so easy to study abroad and my own experience and those of friends all have been fabulous.