 Good evening ladies and gentlemen everyone My name is Jiwei Xiao I'm the chair of the modern languages and literature's department. I want to welcome you to this Very important event. This is actually the very first internship panel that DML has ever Hosted and My job here is not to tell you how important internship is to you you know better than I do and The panelists here are going to share you their stories. So my job here is to introduce The person behind all of this so I'm not the person who organizes event my colleague Professor Lauren Gaskill is The single woman who run the show so let us give her So just want to tell you that at the end of the panel will have food there a real food So everybody is welcome to join us and hand out with us and maybe not just here But also in our offices. We'd like to see you. We'd like to talk with you and chat with you and offer whatever service and help For you. So please do visit us in Canisius. So we're all there I don't want to continue because I I know that This mic might be grabbed by something. I'm I don't want to make that Wonderful, thank you to Jiwei dr. Jiao and thank you everyone for being here This is like dr. Jiao said this is the first time we've done this event And this event would not be possible without our wonderful students who've decided to be on the panel So let's give them a round of applause And students so this event is really for you To get ideas and get inspired by your fellow Fairfield students And who knows maybe you will be on a future internship panel right here So in addition to being supported by the Department of Modern Languages and the College of Arts and Sciences And the Humanities Institute We're so happy to have support tonight from the Dolan School of Business and also the Egan School of Nursing and Health Studies In the Modern Languages Department We know it is so important to learn languages obviously, but We are so happy to see that other schools and departments are also recognizing the importance of language In whatever professional pursuit our students choose to have I'd like to also just acknowledge the other sponsors of tonight Thank you to Italian studies Latin American Caribbean studies Asian Studies the Faculty Committee on Public Lectures and Events and I already said but the Humanities Institute So without further ado, I will introduce the panelists First one down on the end. We have Zaira Paricio. He's a senior joining us from the School of Nursing He's also a Spanish minor. He took the interdisciplinary course on medical Spanish and we'll share with you tonight about his experience working in the field Next Caroline Golding is a junior based in the Dolan School of Business as a finance major She studied Chinese here and is completing the Asian Studies minor and for any of you interested in business-related internships She will tell us tonight about hers Next let's see we have I think out of order. Okay, Julia McNicholas is a senior with double majors in international studies in German And she's also an anthropology major. She will share about her Washington DC internship at the intersection of language learning and foreign policy Let's see next Caroline Mahir is a senior journalism major and Italian Studies minor with a very cool sounding internship that is going to make us all want to go to Italy Next let's see Kala Tiberi Graduated in 2016 with psychology In Spanish double majors and she's currently pursuing a master's here. So she's Did her undergrad and she's now a grad student here and teaching in foundations and she'll discuss her experience teaching Spanish right in our backyard and Then next we'll hear from two students who work with the Connecticut Institute for refugees and immigrants Ariana Tartalia a junior double major in Spanish and communications will share a bit about the organization And how you can get involved and she will also speak about her experience here And then finally Maureen Perry is a senior with double majors in politics and French She will share about her experience translating French with Connecticut translating in French with the Connecticut Institute for refugees and immigrants and then For anyone who's a French student tomorrow, there will be a session information session about the teaching English and France Program, and that's tomorrow at 4 p.m. In BCC 200 Okay, let's give it up for them again Good afternoon fellow students and teachers professors My name is Ed. Arparicio. I'm a Senior here at Fairfield University. I am currently a nursing student at the University School of Nursing And I have a minor in Spanish, which I declared myself for a year Over the summer. I got this great opportunity to internship at the West Haven VA Which is if anyone's familiar veterans of Fair Hospital where we serve our veteran communities I am so I was selected to this program this internship called Ballard, which I applied through Fairfield University and got accepted interviewed by a lot of people from the VA a lot of Representatives in the nursing department at the VA it was a great experience because I was working in the emergency department and It just changed my perspective at looking at health care from a different perspective I never never thought that the veteran population was a population that I wanted to work with But then I realized that I really wanted to work with them and my language just helped a enhance enhance my Education opportunity that I got at the VA Working in the emergency department. I was able to perform nursing assessment nursing skill sets Clinical assessments and it just made me an overall better nursing student and my language came When I was working a lot with the Vietnam veterans and the Iraqi freedom and Afghanistan veterans A lot of those veterans come from Hispanic or Latino descent So it was a way for me to communicate with them a way for me to give provide more comfort for them Because I was able now only to just communicate with them but advocate for them To the other medical teams It was it made my communication with them easier it facilitated my nursing assessments And it just allowed me to give them better education Provide better care and overall it helped me just learn where I stand with my language and where I can improve my language I've noticed that one of the biggest improvement was I wanted to become a better writer in Spanish a lot of the the the medical educational Paperwork that we give out sometimes tend to be in in Spanish and we have to provide them in Spanish for our our bilingual community members and I saw that a lot of the Words were a lot of medical jargon So it was a way for me to learn how to facilitate how to say, okay, you have You have your hypotensive that means your blood pressure is low But someone that doesn't know that someone that doesn't study the medical field would not understand that so it was a way For me to communicate better with my patients and have a key for them Hi, everyone, my name is Caroline and I'm a junior here at Fairfield I'm a finance major in Asian studies minor So I actually came into Fairfield undeclared in the College of Arts and Sciences I wasn't sure really where I wanted to go with my Major minor, but I ended up talking to professor Shao about how I wanted to continue taking Chinese because I started in middle school and Then continued through high school, and I wanted to continue it at Fairfield So she definitely talked to me about the Asian studies minor and how helpful it would be so I declared that and then I ended up moving into the Dolan School of Business where I Decided to declare finance and that was really when I realized how interconnected those two disciplines were So this past summer I interned at Fidelity Investments in asset management compliance so during the interview process I interview with about five or six different people and Although they all had different questions and different things that they asked me the There was a common ground among among all of the interviews which was pointing out my Asian studies minor So every person that I interviewed with pointed it out and asked about it And it was really sort of a topic of conversation and something that they said really stood out and So during the interview process I actually interviewed with all the different people on my team that I am now Working with them currently and my boss said that I was the only one that he's ever interviewed that had the combination of finance and Chinese or Chinese Language and culture Knowledge so that was something that he said really made me stand out among the other candidates Especially because usually you see a lot of business majors which with another business discipline as a minor And although that complements very well I think that having something that's very different from finance is something that helped me stand out in my internship And in particular it was interesting working in a global financial services company Because I could see every day how interconnected the different locations were throughout the world Fidelity has locations in London Canada and They have a trading desk in Hong Kong and other regional sites in China. So it was really interesting to see How interconnected those two were And then throughout my internship like throughout the internship in the summer There was a lot of new people I met and every person when I talked about my major and minor like oh wow That's so interesting and it was really just a topic of conversation And something that was both interesting to talk about and also interested the person who was asking about it So it'll be interesting to see how in the future I can actually use the language skills in my career although I didn't do that this summer just because I was just starting out It was definitely helped me stand out and it'll be interesting to see how it helps going forward Hi, everyone. I'm Julia McNicholas. I'm an international So I'm an international studies and German double major with a minor in anthropology and about a year ago I did an internship with the Linguistic Society of America down in DC and the office itself was only about four people and One of those four was another intern who was a 30 year old graduate student in linguistics So I was this like doe-eyed. I don't know anything about linguistics. I studied cultural anthropology Not the linguistic anthropology. So the first few weeks was me just like trying to figure out the history of the field and Why it was so why like my own personal Connection to linguistics because that would have made that just made the entire experience much more rewarding and it made me more Passionate about what it was doing so that came kind of early on because the fourth president of the LSA was Franz Boas who is a Famous German anthropologist. So that was really exciting I was kind of confused why a German anthropologist was in charge of the linguistics Society of America because we don't have There are no international members of the organization. They're all they all work in Graduate or doctoral programs or do their research. They're all American. We have international honorees, but not a lot of like full-time people that work outside of the US that are a part of it And so I really liked that it made me more interested and it was like Oh, there's a little piece of myself. I can see in the organization and I took that with me like the entire three months I worked there and my work was split up into two major projects the first of which was kind of typical intern work I just had to make a list of every person that's in the field of linguistics in the entire US and From every university. Yeah, that took like two months of me just nine to five Figured out people's you guys as faculty, please put like your email and all like your title because it is so hard to track it down That was my own personal grief about that, but the second project was creating a suite of advocacy materials about why the field of linguistics and language is so important, especially in national security in US foreign policy and I really enjoy doing that because I'm I are in German and this is what I want to do for the rest of my life This is very important to me. Otherwise, I don't have a career and thousands of other people won't have a career and That was shared amongst different research organizations in DC and kind of on Capitol Hill as a way to increase funding for the social sciences just as an especially language from Just to get federal funding for that because at that time in 2017 it was getting really drastically slashed and the little money that was left was usually going to the hard sciences and so as the LSA we wanted to Number one ensure that all of the people that are a part of the organization understood that and it's still extremely important to study Linguistics and how culture brings together through language and how that language develops over time and what that means and Also just because If we don't understand each other, we can't get worked together And that was like the most glaring thing to me if I don't understand What's happening in China we can't do business with China So that was a lot of what I worked on and it's still something I'm super passionate about and care a lot about And yeah, hopefully I'm gonna try to continue my work with German going forward right now I'm planning on going to graduate school in Germany after I graduate But we'll see it's a lot of paperwork Hello Ciao professor is ideas All right, I have no cards because I'm not as skilled as the others but My name is Caroline. I'm a senior here at Fairfields University I am a digital journals a major and I'm an Italian minor which I declared sophomore year after someone roped me into doing it and I was kidding but I Just started Italian when I was a freshman and my mom was Italian after taking ancestry DNA I was a little disappointed to find out that I am 91% Irish, but I am 7% Italian so that's good so I interned for Art of Perfection events, which is a Italian wedding company and They planned weddings in Italy. They plan everything from family reunions to bridal showers to They do it all basically Right now. I'm obviously based in Fairfield, Connecticut But in the summer, I'm actually gonna go to Italy with the company and I'm gonna be working on two weddings so one that's in the Amalfi Coast and another which is near Capri Capri the island of Capri and Yeah, it's pretty awesome and Yeah Speaking obviously helps because I've talked to clients most of them are if they're not from Italy then they're a town in American So it helps especially with little cultural things like how to pronounce their foods or something like that Which they take very seriously. It's Bruschetta is how it's pronounced not bruschetta. Just so everybody's aware. There's little problem with that But what's resolved now? Let's see Yeah, so I pretty much work with everything from like details to logistics. So what flowers look good there? What color scheme blah blah blah? All the boys are like, okay, this is great, but there's also other logistics like Planning things like transportation and stuff like that organizing tours Sometimes the vents are really high on some of them. So you get to like pick out like Fancy Italian cars that maybe they'll come in on or like things like that, which can be really fun And yeah, I also studied abroad. So if you guys have any questions about that, I talk way too much about it with my friends They're like, okay, nobody cares. So I'll answer your questions about that And yeah, that's pretty much it. Thanks Hi, my name is Cal Tabiri. I am a little bit older. I graduated in class of 2016 and I graduated with a major in psychology and Spanish I declared like super late. I was like end of sophomore year I was like I should probably declare some majors and I did too So when I was coming back from abroad at the end of junior year I had to take six classes in the fall to get both my majors and I was like I wanted to do something outside of the classroom and I saw that there was a teaching in Spanish internship And I also had an education minor and so in my mind I was like I hate older children But you know, let's give it a shot and so I Signed up to be a teaching intern at Fairfield Prep. So, you know, there's me little senior in college with 25 16 high school boys And so that was really fun. Um, I still think it's really fun. I'm still there. It's my third year But so I worked with the department head over at Fairfield Prep and she taught like all the upper level classes So when I went in I thought I was gonna be teaching them how to like conjugate verbs Like oh yo abloh like things like that. No, I was teaching them like books in Spanish I was teaching an AP literature course and so it was very intense for me I had to do a lot of reading on my own ahead of time But it was really rewarding. It was really fun to be there with the guys Learning as they were learning figuring out what worked what didn't I made tests. I made quizzes I made games when my department chair was not there I would like go in and teach the class because she was like having surgery or on a retreat Or something. She's like, can you come in? Both have it. I had a cover for her both times And so I would just come in and I would like be like a little mini teacher Yeah, because then and then I was lucky enough that at the end I stayed on so that was fall of senior year and then my advisor was like you can just keep working if you want to and I was like Keep getting the practice and then they actually ended up like letting go of two people at the end of my senior year and so my boss was like you're applying and I was like, okay and so I did and I got the job and so now I've been working there for the past three years and Now I teach a little bit lower things. I teach more like Spanish to Spanish three more grammar based things, but I Use my Spanish every day I also use my experience of the broad I went abroad to the boys actually do want to hear about it They want to waste time talking about me going abroad instead of actually What we're supposed to be learning about but Yeah Okay, so my name is Ariana I'm a Spanish major which I declared very early because my mom told me I should and she was right And then my second major is communication So my internship actually counts for communication, but when I was applying for it, they said we want languages I was like super cool. I could double dip So I work for the Connecticut Institute for Refugees and Immigrants And basically what we do is we handle every refugee that gets granted Refugee status in the United States that comes to United States then gets placed with an agency So that agency then oversees their transition to the United States So we are the one for Connecticut It's the agency itself is over a hundred years old We actually just celebrated our 100th year. I got to go to the Gala. It was super cool The president of Fairfield was there also super cool But so there are many agencies all around the country so this one is for Connecticut So places people throw up Connecticut and a lot of them actually end up in the Bridgeport area Especially when they first come here because that's where our office is and it's easiest for us to get them to all their appointments and everything so The first like week they're here. We have to do like a ton of paperwork We have to get them to apply for Social Security. We have to get them to Get all their doctors like paperwork and verification once they get here They have to go through all these tests and stuff. We have to get them housing Which we usually try and get them before they get here, but some who can't It's super complicated super long process and then the first three months that they're here We they hopefully start getting all this paperwork back So they start getting their Social Security card their workers card so they can like start actually having a job And then we also Registered the children for school, which is what I that was my first day of my internship. I had to register children for school I've never registered a child for school in my life. It was so hard. It was really really hard and then The throughout the next five years they can keep coming back for services So like legal services help them renew their papers and stuff like that. They keep coming back But so a lot of the refugees that I've worked with lately have not actually been Spanish-speaking They've been a lot of Congolese refugees. We get a lot of people from the Democratic Republic of Congo Which I did not know and then we also get a lot of people from Sort of more northern parts of Africa like Entria Which is like on the edge of Ethiopia. It's like on the coast of Ethiopia And then we have recently actually had an influx of immigrants from the I believe it's called the northern Central American Triangle or something like that. It's something triangle But it's the triangle of like Nicaragua Guatemala and El Salvador because of all the violence that's going on there So as these people apply it could take them like years to actually come and About only about half of one percent of people that apply for refugee status here actually get it and actually come to the United States So it's a very very small number and actually with the new legislation from Trump we Used to help over like we used to get over like a hundred and fifty people a year coming to the United States and the past year It was about 35 I believe so significantly less people But we still do work with a lot of refugee families and It's fun. I do something different every time. I mainly work for volunteer services So I mostly work for the people that get the volunteers who drive them places the mentors we do all the interviews for mentors, etc I also work with digital and marketing services, which is my actual internship because I enter for communication But then I also do get to work with the reception and placement services Which is like the social work part like I do get to work with the The immigrants which is super exciting and what's mainly helped me from my language is that It's really hard to learn a language and I do have that experience of like trying to learn a language I mean over a really long amount of time these people kind of just like jump in headfirst But I do have that experience of like somebody's talking to you and you have no idea what they're saying and Like sometimes even like in class like a professor talking to you and you just like you're talking so fast And I don't know what you're saying. What can I use or do you? And like it's so frustrating because you want to understand and you hear like one word and you're like I know what that word means, but I don't know what the rest of the sentence means. Um, so I do like come I Do come to my internship with that experience. So even when I'm working with Congolese refugees who they speak kiss Swahili and some of them also speak Swahili and then also French And they like I mean there are a ton of different languages and they all sound super different It's very cool to like be in the office. You get to hear a lot of different languages But so I do come with that experience of like trying to learn a language and making sure I like talk slow and like try and like Use hand movements and I know that comes from my calm because I know that like when you're speaking to someone It helps like a lot of our communication is nonverbal But then also my knowledge of translation services, which this is gonna sound weird, but like a couple of the refugees I work with don't get direct translators because It's too expensive. So like you only get a direct translator if you don't if you really need it So one of the refugees I work with she's been here for over a year But she's Syrian and she speaks Arabic and she can read Arabic and everything she could write Which some of the refugees can't but she can so when I work with her it was her children I had to sign up for school. So when I work with her when you go to a school You have to provide all this like documentation and everything so certain documents have certain like specific names So I would ask her like do you have the lease for your house? And she would stare at me like I had lobsters crawling on my ears So she would hand me like her phone and we would use like online translation But the problem with online translation is some words don't like translate, right? Like they don't so like I would have to like think like okay So house lease didn't translate right because she's still staring at me like there are lobsters coming out of my ears What are all of the words around house lease that are gonna like help her understand? So I Do know that like that from using translation services if you like click through like all the words you can like find more words So like that's that's how I like get through it is like I like think of all the words around this word Which is definitely something I've learned in Spanish because sometimes you're like I don't know the word for this What are all the words around this that like I can say to like help me find this word? So that's definitely helped me a lot And it's also just helped me understand other cultures. I guess And it was funny one day. I came into the office and my boss was like oh my god I forgot you speak Spanish and I was like yeah, I do like can I help you and she was like no We already found somebody else, but I forgot you speak Spanish. I could use that and I was like, okay I mean it's on my job application, but okay So yeah, that's basically All right, so my name is Maureen I am also a senior here and I'm a double major in politics in French So keeping with the the internship theme like Ariana my internship was actually for my other major It was for politics. So I interned at Make-A-Wish Connecticut, which is a nonprofit. That's actually right in Trumbull And so even within an English-speaking environment I found that my language skills kind of set me apart from the other interns the other volunteers For example, so I was in program services. So what that means is it was doing all the logistics for wishes So when anybody wished to go to Disney or to meet a certain person we'd be planning their Put their their whole trip and making sure that it's all budgeted for and that everything was planned for So one day a wish came into the office That was a girl's wish to go to Paris and this was towards the end of my semester So my supervisors had gotten to know me they knew that I that I spoke French that French was my other major and So they took the folder and they handed it to me and they said Maureen, you know French You know France you studied abroad in France. This is yours So unlike the other interns I actually got a whole project that was just for me And it was within France going planning a whole trip to Paris, which is pretty fun So I would say that just even being a double major in language has really afforded me those opportunities and then within Using my language skills. I actually work as a translator for the Connecticut Institute for rubber cheese Which is a an opportunity that Dr. Goldfield my French professor actually passed along to me When I was abroad it last fall I was in excellent Provence France and I actually took a translation class and so all of those Translation techniques that you were just talking about those really have came in handy And I've I'm in a translation class this year as well So some of the work that I've done was I translated from English to into French, which is harder if anybody knows It was an urban renewal survey for the the city of Bridgeport. So it was pretty cool. Like I don't know how the survey went I mean I sent in what I had and I don't know how many responses they actually got from from the citizens of Bridgeport But I think it's really cool that that through this language experience It's giving those people who may not have a voice in their community a chance to have a voice And so I thought that was a really great way to be able to use that language and and put it to some good work So wow, that was so wonderful to hear from all of you. You are also well-spoken. So thank you again I'm just gonna throw out one or two general questions you guys can Speak to one part of it if you'd like and then we're gonna open it up to Q&A So my two sort of more general Would be how has learning a language or knowing a language other than English How has it changed your life? How has it opened doors or impacted your path? The other one is a little more practical. What advice do you have for Fairfield students who may be interested in pursuing an internship that Uses a language And maybe any any tips or tricks of the trade or any things that were helpful for you there that you would have liked to know So anyone who wants to speak up you guys don't have to say an order But anyone who wants to speak up can you speak up and then we'll open it up in a few minutes? I Could start on the first one It for I mean I just kind of touched on the ways in which I think that your language can diversify you But I also think that within a school as small as Fairfield and a language department That's as small as Fairfield even within this school in this community I think that being a language student in the upper levels whether that's a major or a minor will really serve you well For example last year I applied for one of the Alpha Mugama scholarships And it's a nationwide scholarship But I was actually I actually won one of them and Fairfield University like published a whole article on me And so I wanted to my internship at Make a wish and they they had already seen the article they were congratulating me for for winning the scholarship And I was just shocked Because I don't think that happens very often for other students at other universities So Pete within the language department if you get to know your professors and and you get to know the other faculty I think that they will they will give you those opportunities because it is such a small department Which is really great. I Could try that one alright, so I'd say definitely try to intern for if you guys obviously I'm assuming all of you take languages I would definitely try to do a language internship because it gives you opportunities that you don't have in the classroom And any advice just like just try like don't be nervous people mess up all the time like half the time I'm talking and not half the time. I'm like that bad no offense like hopefully not but like you can make a mistake and They're not going to be like What are you like? What do you they might not know what you're saying? But you'll get through it and the only way to really work on your language is to make mistakes And even people like there's so many different dialects for Italian to like you might not even be making a mistake They might just say things differently So just don't be nervous and just really put yourself out there and try like especially if you go abroad try to speak in the language Don't just go around make yourself a part of the culture Don't just order things in English because oh everyone speaks English here and really try to immerse yourself in it in your Like experiences and then you'll get the most out of it. I can talk about the second question So I think that also there are several internships out there that are very language-based. I would definitely also Think about the fact that there are internships that may not be language-based But where you can definitely use your language or a place where it would help you stand out And so I think if you're taking any sort of language right now I would highly recommend to minor or a double major in it. I think that It sets you apart from so many other applicants because a lot of people just focus on one thing Or like one specific area like just a couple of different business disciplines or a couple of different Arts and sciences disciplines, but I think that when you have something that's so different It's really helps you stand out and it's a huge huge talking point when it comes to the interviewing process It's definitely so helpful when an interview is very conversational And it's something that you love to talk about like I love to talk about the fact that I take Chinese and The fact that I went to China with Fairfield a couple Two summers ago. I went on a faculty-led trip and that was a huge talking point in interviews So I think that if you can try and minor in something that's different And I think that for most people a language minor is very different Also, I feel it sets you apart when you're going to interview I know there is a lot of opportunities out there when I was offered an internship I talked about being Spanish and being raised in a Spanish community and how like there's certain type of Diseases like diabetes that are more prone to Spanish people are more prone to people of low social economic status So it just helps you connect more with with people that you talk to and also it's like It's like, you know, you graduate and you have your mate your major That's like the toast right and having a language. It adds the butter the jelly So that's why I look at it it it gives it it gives it the flavor, you know, so that's what I think I don't want to follow that now You can't be that funny. Um, I I guess what I echo what everybody else is saying in regards to The importance of it I do two other German-speaking positions at Fairfield so every Saturday morning I go with dr. Wilkinson to the German school of Connecticut down in Stamford with a couple of other students and then during the week I'm an OPS ATTA and don't remember which the order It what is it? Thank you. It's an AT And for both of those positions, it's just kind of I'm just supplemental there Just making sure the students understand it and I'm very much not a kid person Let a little morning person and my kids are like five years old and at the German school and it's like early for early morning and Saturday It requires a lot of resilience and patience on my part So I was able to build that up as well as my language and interpersonal skills and When and the students that we go with there's like four of us that Carpool and just kind of sit in misery on a half an hour eye down and then like vent about it on the way back up And we're all in the advanced German class and some of us are better at speaking and some of us are better at grammar and This has been a great way to just bring the German department closer together because we'll go out for lunch sometimes with dr. Wilkinson afterwards and Just share stories of like my teacher looked at me and told me to go get a stapler from the front desk And she said it three times and I still don't know like I then she said in English I finally understood like what stapler is in German So it's it was oh, it's nerve-wracking a lot But it's been a lot of fun, and I'm really grateful that I got the opportunity to do that and it's maybe more Patient as a person Especially when I'm looking at a five-year-old and she's like rapid fire yelling at me and German are singing a song and I just am like cool I know blue But I don't think that I would have had been able to do either that or OPS if I hadn't gotten Close with dr. Wilkinson and dr. Goldfield who runs the OPS program, and I think that Having that relationship and fostering it for all four years has really made in Fairfield and a much more enjoyable place to be for me So, yeah We're talking about other positions But I work with also the Center for Faith in Public Life We do a after-school mentoring program at Cesar Nataya, which is school in Bridgeport and it's like About like 15 kids who don't have behavioral issues, but they have like learning issues So we go we do like an hour of homework with them, and then we do like an activity usually And it's like Cesar Nataya is a super diverse school. We have like kids from all over Around the first day there were two little girls who spoke like almost explicitly Spanish like they would not speak English the one especially would not speak English and Are like this woman Karen who like leads all things. She is studying here in her master's to be a bilingual teacher and so she could talk to them, but like the point isn't that like the Leader talks to them. It's the point is that they're supposed to bond with like us because it's like all college kids from Fairfield Who are like the tutors? so when she was like matching us she matched me with these two girls and My Spanish is proficient enough that I can do this sixth grade Spanish. I think that's where I'm at, but No, I'm kidding But they do teach me words sometimes But so the one little girls from Guatemala and I still work with her to this day And she told me at the end of last year when we finished the program that she was really afraid starting this program because she was afraid nobody was speak Spanish and When that she like doesn't hurt English isn't good enough to like speak English and also she's shy so then she's scared to like speak English and make mistakes and She said that like me speaking to her in Spanish and explaining some of her English stuff in Spanish helps her understand What it's saying in English because she doesn't like it was really hard for her to like do it but now we've gotten to the point that like I make mistakes in Spanish and she'll fix it so when I make miss when she makes mistakes in English I fix it So it kind of goes both ways And you know, I like that she's a kid too. It's like very low pressure I don't feel bad making a mistake in front of her because I do it all the time And I know she's still gonna understand me and she's gonna help me like understand and sometimes I'm like What do you call that thing? And she's like, oh, this is what you call it or like We were reading a story one time and it said Reach us well, and I was like what is that and she was like it's a little river so like you know, she like definitely like any opportunity you have to To use your language like even if it's with sixth graders, like they'll teach you what little river means in Spanish Yeah, just to get out everyone saying well first of all if you were interested in working after Phil Prep or like interning come talk to me I can set you up with the person who runs it. She's great We're always looking for more people to come diversify what we're doing and just to say everyone saying basically don't be afraid I was like talking to one of my students about that today because he was like I don't want to speak Spanish and I was like why not and he's like I'm afraid people are gonna make like fun of me for Making mistakes. I was like I make mistakes in English I was like you guys literally laughed at me yesterday because I said something wrong in English, which is my first native language I was like I would never make fun of you for saying something wrong in Spanish And I do say things wrong in Spanish all the time and I have native students who are like mystery you mess that up And I'm like, okay, you're right But we're gonna move past it because you make mistakes in English. I make mistakes in English Spanish whatever we all make mistakes So definitely just go for it because as long as you're smarter than them you're winning Okay, let's see. So I think we're gonna open it up for Q&A now Who would like to start us off with a question? Bring the mic over to you. Okay So we're filming this so if we have any questions we have to make sure that we talk into the mic here it is Hello, I'm wondering did anybody in turn while studying abroad? Do you have that experience as well? I did When I was abroad I went to Florence and I interned with a Mac newspaper there and I wrote for a local newspaper there I went around and did everything from writing to in Italian translating into English and Talk I talked to a lot of business owners around in Italy to get ads and stuff like that for the newspaper Which was really cool because I got to know a lot of the town And say like oh, yeah, like I talked to the owner of that restaurant yesterday Like I know all about the food here. You should definitely try this like it's the best kind of thing Go read my article about it But you can't because it's in Italian but But yeah, it was a really cool experience To get out there especially Experiencing the workforce in the European country. It's very different Sometimes I was a little frustrated and I'd be like why is nobody here like it's time to work So I I was like come on guys. Let's let's get this done They'd show up like an hour late with a cappuccino. They'd be like And I'm like no, I've been sitting here for an hour, but um, yeah, but it was really cool So definitely got a good experience there and Just to add on to that in the program that you should have gotten at the end of the program There are three students included who were not able to be present, but they still wanted to participate As resources for you so there are actually two students Catherine Litchfield who's currently in France Has an internship So that's another one as well as Sean Tomlinson who studies German and she is not currently in Germany She's at a conference, but she did have an internship in German Germany and then Blanca Marty also Has had the internship at Fairfield Prep. Oh, it still has Okay, Michelle. Hi everyone. I was gonna ask Maybe everyone in this room or everyone on this panel How many of you have reached out to a professor to help you find this internship or to like negotiate some of these questions? And also, how many of you have checked our super duper website on our department webpage. Yay So I don't come from a family that has a military background or veterans in my family So I found out about this internship through my professor dr. LaVonio It's the eating school nurses were really Centered on veterans sent to care and she told me like I think you would be a good fit for for the veterans It's a population that's an older population But you also have a younger population, but she was like you like older people So you would be great at working with the older people So I talked to her about it. I didn't even know our President our Dean Dean Kaser is actually a fellow vet. She was in the army So it was really cool to connect to connect with her about that experience Because I like in my future plans I do and plan on enlisting in our military to see like, you know to see how it it feels to be in Active duty to walk in their shoes so I could provide better care for our veterans And that did anybody else retell to a professor or use the department website on our internship list No Anybody if you haven't checked out our internship list, please check it out on the department website department of modern languages Set of people right here with great experience. What would you like to ask? I'm so impressed I feel like you know hearing your stories make me feel you're Somehow closer to reality, you know working with refugees and all these stories. I mean, it's very touching that you're Closer to this larger reality and you have this international perspective Because of that, but my question has more to do with something more practical. So when you are Applying for internship Jobs what are I mean, you might have several choices. So what might be your? standard criteria for choosing one particular over the others and Also, I wonder are these internship jobs paid or unpaid and does it actually affect your decision? That was a really good question I think one of my base Criteria is when I am applying to internships. I know I got two internships over the summer But I want to see which internship is gonna give me the most education opportunity The other internship I had it was more of a CNN job more of a nursing assistant But I didn't want to do that kind of work. I wanted to do real nursing work I feel like that's the biggest criteria when it comes to an internship. What are you gonna get out of that? Internship, what is the most education opportunity that internship could offer you? I know also The pay was good at the VA I Made 80% of what a nurse at the VA makes so that was a great great way to like Put myself in that real real world scenario. I remember doing 12-hour shifts doing night shifts and Actually Documenting seeing people's records medical records. So it was it was a very very good process I had to go through the government to get this internship. I'm a federal employee So it was a different process where I had to get fingerprinted. I had to get background checked I had to do intensive applications online that were about 60 to 40 pages long I had to send out references to my bosses and they got letters from the department of the VA saying Oh, is this guy a good worker? Is he is he a felony or stuff like that? Had to get recommendation letters from my professors It was definitely a long process, but definitely worth it in that. I think something that's really important when you're looking for an Internship is the company culture when you're applying I think not even just in the business world, but any other sort of internship. It's really important to look at the company or the organization's goals and how they treat their employees and what their Sort of mission or messages What I loved about fidelity was how global and how diverse the workforce was They were really adamant about having The most diverse group of people that they could have because it sets the company apart by having so many different Diverse thoughts and opinions And it really just improves the company overall So I think when you're applying definitely Although I think a lot of people think of the pay you want like the highest paying job you can get But you really want to be happy with where you're working So I think it's really important to look into that culture and see if you could see yourself there in the future And if it's like a really good fit My internship was not paid and DC Metro is not cheap So that was that was something that like I thought about but it didn't it didn't deter me from doing it And I don't know I'm still trying to figure out what I'm going to weigh when I look for jobs in the real world after I graduate Trying to like figure out what I want to focus on and when and for how long and because I like I'm 21 I feel like hopefully have a lot of time left to figure it out But for right now I'm looking at masters of public policy and masters and international relations and German graduate schools So that I can kind of have the best of both worlds and Sometimes those programs are broader a lot cheaper than they are here Because most especially in Germany a lot of universities don't have tuition fees So you only pay like 128 euros for an entire year of graduate school, which is insane And that's a big plus and it makes having if you do have an internship on paid it makes a little bit easier when you don't have to think about debt I Would say also one great thing about Fairfield is that you can do those internships for credit So I know my internship in probably is yours for credit as well So within like I know within the College of Arts and Sciences You can do internships for credit and so instead of taking five classes You can take four classes and then intern for about 12 weeks 12 hours per week and then that's something that you can add to your resume and it's always a talking point for for Interviews and something that really stands out about you on your resume So if you're thinking about Interning and it might not be a paid position Definitely ask if that you if you can do that internship for credit because like Julia said it's tough to work and not get paid It makes showing up and staying for those long eight-hour days pretty tough but if you know that you're spending this time and Instead of sitting in a class or and doing homework for a class I think it's much more rewarding and it makes you work a lot harder and Ted what you what she said, um, I know that some internships aren't paid But the biggest thing is putting that on your resume. It shows that you have Clinical experience or you have real-world experience in the field which we want to pursue so when employers see that they Stare they kind of are taken by they're like, okay Wow, he knows what he's doing or she knows what she's doing because she's done it and she's performed it Well, I think we can continue this conversation here and outside at our reception if you guys have any other questions Please stay or please stay and talk to the other faculty I'd also like to thank the professors of the department for helping me to put this all together I could not have done this without you all so thank you And one more applause for our panelists Thank you