Throughout these four years, even as three of them were in some way marked by the pandemic, I still managed to experience much of what the department and the university have to offer students. In 2020, I received the Outstanding College Student of Portuguese from the Indiana chapter of the AATSP (American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese). The next year, in 2021, I wrote my undergraduate honors thesis on Brazilian queer cinema, which received the departmental Spanish and Portuguese Outstanding Undergraduate Research Achievement Award, as well as the university-wide Executive Dean’s Award for Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity. Beyond the classroom, I was able to participate in Teatro VIDA’s production of “O rei da vela” this past season, an experience I will never forget.

The summer after graduation, again with the assistance of the university through a FLAS (Foreign Language and Area Studies) grant, I will finally be traveling to São Paulo, Brazil. After that, I will be moving to Los Angeles to pursue a Ph.D. in Afro-Luso-Brazilian Literature, Creative Writing, and Visual Culture at UCLA, where I will of course be using my Portuguese (and in all likelihood, my Spanish as well) in further research and eventually, teaching.

I could fill an entire page just thanking different people who have in some way helped me along throughout these four years. Dr. Luciana Namorato, the director of my thesis, as well as a frequent mentor, and Dr. Estela Vieira, a guide throughout graduate school applications, were both instrumental in my undergraduate career, as well as in my admission to UCLA. Dr. Alejandro Mejías-López, a member of my thesis committee, is another member of the department whose help and guidance were invaluable. To them, and many others in the department, I say thank you.