My Public Outreach Commitments
in theFrench and Spanish Languages.

        I like to think I've been inventive with my application of four learned languages, as well as this degree in French literature, to public servic projects and community engagement activities. Back home, in New York City, I have been volunteering at Weill Cornell Medical Center and the Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital for the past two years. In these settings, I use every Spanish, French, Russian, and English almost every day. In a cosmopolitan epicenter as is this city, the hospitals welcome people from all over, even those who do not speak English yet.

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      At the time of their admittance to the emergency room, patients may have just settled into the city and only recently identified a community with which they wish to live; it is the setting of their new life. Whether a patient speaks English or any other language better, their preoccupation with healthcare is the same. My job, in this scenario is to ease the fear of missing vital details about one's health as they are communicated by a medical professional. Patients are happier when you speak the language in which they think, moreso than just the language in which they are able to communicate.

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      Furthermore, when I lived in French-Speaking Canada, I volunteered over one semester at the breast clinic of an entirely French-speaking hospital. This was an experience in which I learned more about Canadian customs than in any other context living in Canada. Interestingly enough, people show a great deal about themselves when they are distressed. Upon entering an emergency room or an oncology clinic, the social and conversational filter that exists at a more common disposition in an ordinary day of one's life naturally drops.