The Power of the Pen
Proficiency in Spanish is the gateway to immersion
in Latin America and a career in journalism
By Piya Kashyap
This article was printed in Abroad View magazine fall 2007
Growing up in the suburbs of Massachusetts, and surrounded by Spanish-speaking immigrant communities, Sara Lipka was thrilled that learning a second language could enable her to communicate with her neighbors. Her flair for the Spanish tongue sparked in sixth grade, and by her senior year in high school she was already taking a course in grammar and literature meant for native speakers. With the guidance of her Cuban instructor, Sara improved her grasp of the language and gained exposure to many aspects of Spanish culture through dance, food, and interaction with fellow students from a variety of Spanish-speaking countries. By the time she started her freshman year at Duke University in 1997, Sara knew that she would double major in Spanish and a social science. Her curiosity about the heritages of her childhood friends inspired her to spend a year studying in Latin America.
Sara’s first study abroad experience was as a sophomore through a Duke program in La Paz, Bolivia, and her second semester, spent in Chile, was inspired by a unique classroom experience at Duke. Sara remembers how a Chilean foreign administrator spoke candidly to her class only a week before ex-dictator Augusto Pinochet was put under house arrest in London: “This guy who had been sitting on a table in front of our class talking to us like we were his friends was all of a sudden in the middle of this international
controversy,” she says.
By the time Sara arrived in Chile through the School for International Training (SIT) she had decided to complement her Spanish study with a major in anthropology, a discipline that she says helps interpret history and the world we live in and requires skills such as creativity and meticulous observation, which can be even more valuable when inhabiting a foreign context.
In Chile, she kept a cultural-observations journal and used writing to help synthesize her ideas and articulate the connections and reflections that were constantly occurring throughout her journey. In both Bolivia and Chile, Sara lived with host families who had siblings close to her age. Sara made a concerted effort to engage with her host cultures on her own through cooking classes in Bolivia and by playing on a pick-up softball team with all Chilean women. To Sara, this kind of total immersion made complete sense: “When I was in college I could hang out with American students all the time. It meant a commitment to more involvement with the people in the host country in which I was living.”
FROM THEN TO NOW
While in Chile, Sara completed a month-long independent study in the field of theater for her SIT program. Because there was a presidential election underway and due to a still politically raw post-dictatorship state, Sara became interested in the movement toward reconciliation through the arts and, specifically, political theater. This newly found passion led her to apply for a Fulbright Fellowship as a post-graduate in Chile, and on her drive home from graduation Sara found out that she had received it.
Looking back on the experience, Sara sees the Fulbright as an important form of public diplomacy and a hugely rewarding experience. She says that in many areas of Chile, she was the first American many locals had met. Sara became the resident anthropologist at a theater company that was putting on a strongly political show about “the Disappeared” in Chile. There she conducted long-format interviews with the actors and director and audience exit surveys about reactions to political theater and helped with workshops for housewives in low-income communities to encourage self-expression and empowerment through theater. Sara reiterates that the fruit of her work was in the bite and chew: “I felt like the result of my project was more in the experience of it than it was in any sort of written report I produced, though I do have one.”
NEXT STEPS
As a result of her Fulbright Sara discovered that she did not want to pursue a career in academia. Through working as an editorial assistant for a theater journal, and collaborating with another Fulbrighter who was writing freelance articles, Sara became taken with the idea that she could write “engaging original material for an [audience] broader than an academic [one].”
When Sara returned to the United States she brought these lessons with her and applied for an internship at The Atlantic Monthly. Today, Sara works as a staff reporter for The Chronicle of Higher Education. Whenever she can she writes on issues with an international focus such as stories on Sudanese refugee students in the United States or Cuban scholars denied a visa to attend a U.S.-based conference.
Through her many travels and exposure to a variety of disciplines, Sara feels that she has finally settled on a role that is part actress, part journalist, and part anthropologist. Success in her work is based on careful observation and analysis that requires an assimilationist technique like the one she executed so seamlessly during her time in South America.
Sara integrates her extensive period abroad into her everyday life in a number of ways. She takes part in a Spanish-English exchange with a young Colombian woman, and she takes advantage of the diverse environment of D.C. by participating in Chilean embassy events. In the past two years Sara has joined in and led heritage trips to Israel, where she helped young people keep an open mind through travel.
When asked what studying abroad has taught her, Sara replied: “[It] teaches you a lot about relating to people and lessons in perspectives, but it also teaches you how much you don’t know. In that way it’s really humbling. It’s sort of like the idea that as the island of your knowledge grows so does the shore of your ignorance.” AV