I started studying Korean during the summer after freshman year at Middlebury Language Schools. I took level 1 Korean that summer, and achieved a low-intermediate on the American Council of Teaching Languages fluency scale. From then on, I have attended middlebury two more consecutive summers, with this past summer achieving high-intermediate (B2) in Korean on the American Council of Teaching Languages fluency scale; allowing me to reach professional proficiency in Korean. I did a 15 minute presentation, and a final research paper about the influence of BL(Boy’s Love) dramas on gay fans. Middlebury Language Schools is an intensive 8-week program that bars the students from using English during their studies of a foreign language. You are able to finish a year’s worth of college class in the 8 weeks by having 20 hours of class each week and mandatory breakfast, lunch, and dinners with teachers.

In addition to Korean, I’ve explored other languages such as Japanese, Thai, Spanish, and Vietnamese. I took a year of Japanese my freshman year, a semester of Thai, and taught myself some Spanish and Vietnamese on the side. There have been many times where learning Korean has helped me mediate altercations. For example, when I studied abroad in South Korea, my teacher kept getting angry at a student for having hiccups and said they were being rude. I was able to explain to the teacher that they are not doing it on purpose nor are they burping, it was just an effect of them having acid reflux. I also was able to explain to the student that teachers in Korea often don’t like when students make noises or even ask questions in class. This helped them both understand each other better.

This semester, in my senior year, I am working on my thesis entirely in Korean. I have achieved enough proficiency to conduct a senior thesis in Korean which is not common at Wesleyan. The experience of pushing myself to learn a language far from English has sharpened my critical thinking and communication skills, leaving me more confident in my ability to handle complex projects.

Through my time at Wesleyan these experiences of learning languages, advocacy, working on challenging academics, have prepared me to enter the workforce; whether in international work, law, or a new experience to discover.