Choosing Electives with Purpose

In my previous two columns, I focused on the recent 2024 AU Convocation by providing a behind-the-scenes look at my personal journey to a Bachelor of Arts degree, with a major in English and minor in Political Science.  However, this journey would not have been complete without considering the electives I personally selected with a definite purpose.

While electives can be chosen at random, based on one’s interests or needs, I focused on certain electives from the very beginning with a specific future goal in mind.  Admittedly, this was made easier by the fact that I absolutely enjoyed them and they made me truly content. For my goal, I focused on Spanish courses in particular.  While AU, unfortunately, does not offer a Spanish major, minor, or certificate program, there are quite a few electives to choose from.  AU offers a variety of SPAN courses, including SPAN 200: Introductory Spanish I, SPAN 201: Spanish for Beginners II, SPAN 300: Intermediate Spanish, SPAN 301: Intermediate Spanish II, SPAN 330: Textual Analysis and Composition, and SPAN 400: Advanced Spanish Grammar I.

After starting from SPAN 300 (as I had previously studied Spanish and lived abroad in Central and South America), I continued through the 300 levels before completing SPAN 400.  These elective courses have been especially beneficial for me as I now live in a northern Mexican city.  In addition, during the past several months, I have begun preparing for my Spanish proficiency exam, which is a requirement for the graduate program in Translation Studies that I hope to enter soon.

That said, my Spanish language learning journey began about 15 years ago when I took a Central and South American history class during my first semester of university and found myself in the region a few short months later.  From my first days in a small Nicaraguan mountain town to significant time spent in the western highlands of Guatemala, busy San Salvador in El Salvador, and Buenos Aires, Argentina to my current location in northwestern Mexico, my Spanish journey has been long and winding—but interesting nonetheless.

During my travels throughout Latin America, I have found the regional differences and dialects, often influenced by local Indigenous languages, as well as waves of migration and immigration, historical processes, and proximity to borders, reminiscent of my lived experience as an immigrant in Canada—albeit from a different region of the world.  In many ways, it reminds me of my own family’s history of living along borderlands and my youth in multicultural Toronto, in which many spoke a variety of languages and linguistic hybridity abounded.  It should come as no surprise that I became an editor, a grammar instructor, a hopeful future translator, and someone seeking to understand all things hybrid, nuanced, and complicated.

Post-graduation, my advice to current students is to choose electives with purpose, as these may very well help you in your future, even if AU does not offer them as a full program.  But while purpose and goals are crucial, choosing electives for pure interest and enjoyment is also incredibly important.  If you can find electives that satisfy both—like I did—so much the better.  I hope they lead you to your dreams.