Previously for my semester-long project,
I was working with a classmate to go out to local schools to teach them about
wellness and nutrition. However, we ran into a pretty major issue—we only got
one response back from schools. We got an email written and sent out to around
five schools near campus. After four or five days, we got a response from a
school saying basically that they already had a sports trainer at the school to
teach the athletes. Well, we had hoped to not only help athletes, but also the
general physical education classes. Also, we had figured it would be better for
the kids to hear from people closer to their age to help it sink in and be more
relatable. But no matter, if they didn’t want us to come, that was fine, because
we had other school options that we could visit. We thought this until we never
heard back from any of the other schools. So, it was back to the drawing board
for our project.
I wrestled with the idea of writing a little book,
like a “Wellness for Dummies” type thing or making a wellness pamphlet, but I
felt like that wouldn’t be as impactful as I would’ve hoped. I struggled to
figure out what to do until I talked to some of my other classmates about what
they were doing. In our class, a small group of people are spending their
twenty hours on learning a second language on a website/app called Duolingual.
When they told me about this, I knew
it was exactly what I wanted to do. I had fallen in love with Spanish in high
school. Originally, I signed up for Spanish because I was required to take two foreign
language classes, and I felt that Spanish was the most logical language to take.
However, soon after joining the class, I was hooked. I ended up taking Spanish 1,
2, and, because enough of us signed up for it, they created a Spanish 3 class
for us. Then, once again, because enough of us wanted to take it, they created
an AP Spanish class. The idea of learning a whole new language, one that most people
in your area did not know was crazy. The notion of how cultures in different
areas developed a way of communication totally different from the one you know,
and the fact that it’s just different ways of moving and using your mouth to
communicate with one another in ways that are no way similar but meaning the
same thing blows my mind to think about. Also, the idea that other people think in a varying language is amazing. The fact I could learn a second language and
be able to experience this was exhilarating.
Languages are really cool.
So, my plan now is to spend my
twenty hours working on Spanish. So far I have an 11-day streak on Duolingual
(which is a really helpful and easy way to learn the language), and I will
continue to take the lessons to hopefully better understand Spanish.
