Ei! My name is Antônio Jorge Medeiros Batista Silva (yes—four last names!) and I'm a '25 from Governador Valadares, Brazil. My journey to Dartmouth has crossed two continents, three countries, and over 10 schools—and I'm a strong believer that everyone's path to the Big Green was unique in a way. At Dartmouth, I am interested in studying Linguistics, Native American & Indigenous Studies, and Spanish. I am really passionate about social justice, learning languages, and the oxford comma!
This class is an introduction to the Spanish minor and major courses and, although I did not expect to particularly like it, it not only turned out to be my favourite but it made me start considering a degree in the department!
In this class, we analysed different productions of Latinx American theatre. Prof. Analola Santana was probably the best person I met this year at Dartmouth. Being her student was a very important experience as I try to navigate my potential majors and minors.
In this class, I was able to carve time out of my busy Dartmouth schedule to study and learn my Indigenous language: Krenak. With the help of Prof. Gokke, all students were encouraged to develop a final project that spoke to their community's needs for language learning and revitalisation. It was an extremely important class for me, not only academically, but also for my personal healing process.
I had the honour of spending my sophomore fall in Madrid, taking part in the Spanish FSP. There, Prof. Martín was not only a great professor, responsible for my favourite lecture of the program, but also an incredible company throughout our classes and in-country trips. Great way to wrap up my Spanish minor, honestly!
This was my second class in the NAIS department, and thus it took me one step closer to wrapping up my major. Nonetheless, it was Prof. Powell's genuine charisma and caring personality that made it my favourite of the term!
This course was definitely life changing! Prof. Pochedley, a visiting post-doc of the Potawatomi nation did a great job at keeping the students engaged while teaching us to see the land we inhabit as a source of knowledge and spirituality. In a majority Indigenous classroom, we got to develop individual projects related to our traditional homelands, learning to navigate the world through Native world lenses.
Prof. Gómez is one of those profs I've always wanted to take a class with. His work with the Horror genre in Modern Spanish literatures amazes me, and it was an honour to guide in-class discussions and develop my own research on the themes of science, testimony, and fear.
LING54 is an umbrella course: the actual content of the course may vary each year, but it is the common letter-number code to refer to the course taught abroad by your accompanying Dartmouth Linguistics professor. In this year's Linguistics Foreign Study Program (FSP), LING54 was a 'Language Documentation' class, wonderfully taught by Prof. David Peterson.
It's Antônio here, once again, to walk you through my termly choices at college—i.e., what courses did I pick this time? As you might know, here at Dartmouth, we utilize the quarter system. Instead of splitting the year into two equal parts, we part it in four ways, each three months long. As part of the D-plan—the college's organizational system for knowing when you'll be on campus, taking classes, studying abroad, or whatnot—we can choose one of the four annual terms to be our break. Something I explained in earlier posts was my choice of not being here for my Sophomore Summer—a tradition most students look forward to completing.
But, well, now I'm finally back on campus. It is the first term of my third year of college, and things have just started to feel real.
Even though I've known what I want to study for a long time, Dartmouth gave me much room to explore different options—including those radically outside my comfort zone. Now, I finally feel that I'm working towards a realistic goal: I'm going to graduate. I'm going to leave campus on a random foggy morning in July 2025 to never come back—except for reunions, of course.
And, even more crazy to think about: I'm leaving here with a title. This day might seem far away right now—indeed, I still have two years to go—but I can sense it getting closer and closer. Soon, I'll officially be a linguist. But why am I taking you down this rabbit hole of a rant? Because for the first time, I was struck by reality when choosing my courses.
As a 3rd year student, there is still room for exploring distinct fields, but it's about time I become more serious about my degree requirements. Aside from completing the required coursework for my major, I questioned what else I could take from my time in college to ensure I took the best out of every opportunity. And here I am, halfway through my college career and declaring a new major. Something I never expected I'd like to study so much, but that has taken hold of my academic pursuits: the Spanish language.
After my Foreign Study Program (FSP) in Madrid, I was determined to at least end up minoring in Hispanic Studies. However, during this course selection period, I came across such interesting offerings in the Spanish department that I signed up for more classes than needed for the minor. I enrolled in SPAN 43.07: Spooky Spain: Modern Horror and SPAN 53.02: Spanish Linguistics, Rhetoric, Poetics, and Politics. Now that I'm here, I might as well just push for a second major. That is the beauty of Dartmouth's intense approach to liberal arts: it can have you fall in love with the least unexpected subjects.
After returning from an enriching study abroad program, I'm diving into a bustling spring semester here at Dartmouth. Here are my four courses I'm taking this term!
Dartmouth's liberal arts curriculum pushes students to explore new departments and draw connections between seemingly disparate disciplines. Come explore my Economics, Physics, and Asian, Societies, Cultures, and Languages classes!
