Graduate Student Spotlight- Nico [SPRING2021]

The next Graduate Student Spotlight is Nico! Nico has a very unique story, written below, that let him to JMU. Some people take a gap year while Nico left school for many years.

Hey all! My name is Nico and it took me a while to figure out what I was doing. I was shuffled along from grade school to high school to college as passively as a jellyfish in the current, ultimately getting my degree in anthropology in 2011. The whole time I measured my success, my self-worth, in GPA. As a result, all my decisions were based on taking the path of least resistance in order to get that piece of paper that I truly thought would grant fulfillment. This single-minded perspective caught up to me in the end as I left my final exam, stopped dead in my tracks and panicked as I realized I no longer knew where I was walking to. Maybe other people would have had a eureka moment at that point, but I instead immediately jumped at the only thing that made me feel safe, more classes. I enrolled in EMT school at the local volunteer fire department. Those few months were like warm bath water, but then came the time to get out of the tub and actually run calls in the ambulance, real-world stuff. It was messy and it was hard, but for the first time I really understood that education rings hollow without its application. This was real.

Over the next couple years I found myself doing things I never could have imagined, I became used to walking into a house, finding someone in cardiac arrest and instinctively administering CPR. As one task became rote I took on more responsibilities, like public outreach and CPR training. All the while there was this kernel of a thought that slowly spread its roots in my mind, mirroring this growing confidence; joining the Peace Corps. When I was in high school the Peace Corps was an almost mythic thing to me, my daydreams took on sepia tones as I thought of the people that rejected comfort and sought to make their humble mark on the world. But different from those high school daydreams, I could now see myself there among them, and so I applied. The recruiters suggested that I get more experience in health outreach, which led to me teaching sex-ed to auditoriums of high schoolers. To adequately frame this significance of my accepting this role, back when presenting to my college classes I’d invariably stutter and forget to breathe, standing there before just a dozen of my peers. I didn’t take on this task flippantly; it absolutely terrified me. But I did it. It was far from smooth sailing, especially in the beginning, but I kept doing it until I broke that fear and accepted hardship’s role in growth.

The Peace Corps was by far the most formative period of my life; it put me into a “sink or swim” situation that proved how capable I was and just how much of my success was determined not by some inborn characteristic, but rather by willpower and determination. I made connections through mutual curiosity, they taught me about farming, construction and the byzantine Paraguayan bus system. I taught them about writing grants, fogon construction, and a variety of health issues. Health was my assigned specialty and I always thought I would end up working in some aspect of healthcare. But living with these people chatting, relating stories and telling jokes in their language, Guarani, opened my eyes to language’s importance. Some of my peers didn’t learn Guarani, instead choosing to speak Spanish instead. Nelson Mandela said “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his own language, that goes to his heart.” Language is more than communication; it makes us who we are and it shapes the world, it bridges the gaps between discrete consciousnesses and tickles the chords of emotion. Language, so otherworldly yet tangible, is magic. That’s why I decided to make it my career, dedicate myself to it.

But this idea was still somewhat nascent when my 2-year Peace Corps term ended.I didn’t feel ready to go home so I contacted an TOEFL training center in Costa Rica and ended up teaching there for a year. It was a very different arrangement. Rather than pursuing my 100% self-directed projects in a tiny community of 50 households, I was now a member of a fluorescent-lit faculty in San Jose, Costa Rica’s capital, a very jarring shift. At first it felt a bit constraining, but I did learn a lot about pedagogy from these professional educators who sent me to high schools and corporate headquarters to teach English. It was in that office space that I met a local speech-language therapist who opened me up to this whole new opportunity. It seemed perfect, a career that combined language and teaching in that one-on-one setting which I found most rewarding.

It was only after that moment did I feel ready to return to the US. When I had originally left I didn’t entirely understand what drove me, let alone that I’d be gone for 3 years. But in retrospect I can see that I was always looking for that path to happiness, though it took me a while to find true north. Without the experiences I’ve had, for which I’m so very grateful, I doubt I would have recognized it. This is what speech-language pathology means to me and that’s why I’m here today.