About Me

Growing up, I would always play "school" with my cousins in our grandparents' basement. I would bring workbooks, writing supplies, paper, bins for my "students" to turn in their work, etc., and set up my own classroom. If one of my cousins wanted to be the teacher instead of a student, admittedly, I would throw a fit until I got my way. 

As I finished grammar school and entered high school, I slowly began to forget about those days of playing "school" as a teacher, and I focused on being the student myself. The very first class of my high school career was Spanish 1. I had never taken a Spanish class before or any other language class. My knowledge of the Spanish language was limited to what I had learned as a toddler watching "Dora the Explorer." I was petrified to learn Spanish, and I began the class with a very negative attitude thinking that I would be bored out of my mind or that it would be so complicated that it wouldn't matter. However, almost instantly, I fell in love with the class and the language itself. 

Before I knew it, I had reached my senior year of high school, and I became a "peer leader," which saw me working alongside other upper-level  students in a Spanish classroom where we aided the teacher with instructional activities. I was brought back to those moments in my grandparents' basement, and I was living out many of my childhood "school" dreams. Also, during my senior year, a friend went to Italy for a study abroad trip and came back with a newfound love for Italian culture and the Italian language. This inspired me to also begin learning Italian. The rest is history! 

I enrolled in DePaul University's World Language Education program with an emphasis on Spanish, and I declared a double major in Italian with the hopes of one day teaching both languages. Following the pattern of my first classes at a new institution changing my life's trajectory, I was introduced to the field of linguistics during my first college-level class, "Latino Language Communities in Chicago." I instantly fell in love with a new topic, and my plans for the future were changed yet again. I had so much fun helping to conduct linguistic research.  I was specifically fascinated by the work that I did related to sociolinguistics and language acquisition. I began to see the value of research and how it can inform teaching, learning, and society in general.  

The combination of my love for languages, linguistics, and teaching brought me to pursue my graduate studies in Spanish Linguistics.