On campus, I served the university student body as both an IU Peer Coach and Hutton Ambassador. As an IU Peer Coach, I managed biweekly meetings with a roster of 12 students each semester to guide them toward undergraduate success. As a Hutton Ambassador, I gave campus tours to prospective honors students and families and facilitated Q&A sessions to boost student enrollment. I also worked as a research assistant twice; once studying media representations of the Cuban insurgency during the Spanish-American War with Dr. Arlene Díaz, and a second time quantifying linguistic erosion in Dominican Spanish with Dr. Erik Willis.

I studied abroad four times, including a summer in the Netherlands, a summer in the Dominican Republic, a spring break in China, and a semester in Barcelona, Spain (a study abroad trip to Indonesia was cancelled due to the pandemic). In Barcelona, I stayed with a French-expatriate and volunteered at the Universitat de Barcelona, where I taught weekly English classes to undergraduates, graduates, and local adults.

After graduation, I will be working as a Bilingual Immigration Paralegal in Indianapolis, where I will gain hands-on experience of our country's immigration system before I pursue my joint JD/MA program.

My invaluable experience with the Department of Spanish & Portuguese will allow me to apply my extensive studies of US foreign policy, Latin American literary and cultural resistance, Latin American migration, and US-Latino experience in a career in immigration law, policy, research, and advocacy in the future. I especially thank Dr. Andrés Guzmán, Dr. Erik Willis, and Dr. Anke Birkenmaier for providing me with a space to reconnect with my Mexican roots, along with exposing me to the vast histories and cultures of the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean.