Our department has also offered me great funding opportunities in addition to associate instructor assistantship. I worked as a graduate research assistant of Dr. Kimberly Geeslin in Spring 2020 and as her part-time research assistant during several summer and winter breaks. This gave me an invaluable experience of being deeply involved in various teaching and research activities and learning from an experienced faculty member on navigating academia.

During my time at IU, I feel fortunate to have the opportunity to publish and present research projects with faculty members, alumni, and other graduate students. Dr. Geeslin, Dr. Bret Linford (alumnus), Thomas Goebel-Mahrle, and I just published a chapter on the role of perseveration in the acquisition of Spanish variable subject expression in an edited volume titled Referring to discourse participants in Ibero-Romance languages. At New Ways of Analyzing Variation 2022, I presented a work on the acquisition of Spanish progressive lexical bases, which was done in collaboration with Dr. Geeslin and Dr. Stephen Fafulas (alumnus). I also collaborated with Dr. César Félix-Brasdefer on a project about cross-cultural differences in refusal strategies in Chinese, Spanish, and English, which we presented at American Association for Applied Linguistics 2021, and Hispanic Linguistics Symposium 2022. Furthermore, I have been working on a project on Spanish Differential Object Marking with Dr. Dylan Jarrett, Dr. Matthew Pollock, Dr. Jamelyn Wheeler, all of whom are recent graduates from the department. All these experiences have been greatly rewarding, as they allow me to learn from more advanced researchers and peers.

With all the benefits I have gained from the friendly and encouraging departmental environment, I have always wanted to contribute to further its growth. Therefore, I served as the treasurer of GSAC in 2020-2021 and was part of the organizing committee of the first virtual Diálogos. In Spring 2023, I presented twice at the Departmental Professionalization Workshop Series to share my data collection experience and my suggestions as an advanced graduate student.

I am grateful to all my professors, peers, and staff members of the department for creating a supportive environment. I am indebted to my committee directors and members, Dr. Patrícia Amaral, Dr. Manuel Díaz-Campos, Dr. Fafulas (University of Mississippi), Dr. Félix-Brasdefer, and Dr. Rex Sprouse (Second Language Studies) for their constant support. I would like to express my deepest appreciation to Dr. Geeslin, who made me a better researcher and a teacher, and who will always be my role model in both academia and life. I deeply miss her warm smiles.