Prompt #7, Folio Café, week of 3/20:What are your academic and/or career goals and how do they tie into the arts/humanities? In what ways have you or do you plan to network with others in your field of interest? What hinders you from networking?  

I love this prompt because when I first found out about the pathways program, I was so excited, and I learned that they recently started accepting interpreting majors. It was really cool being involved with other humanities and art majors and I felt like I could really still relate to a lot of them. One-Obviously because we are socially oriented in our passions. We like working with people and we enjoy learning how our culture and our human behavior work together. Secondly- We think of our skills as art. Something you will quickly learn about the interpreting community is that our hands and knowledge are our mediums. You will often hear that a person signs a beautiful way, or their fingerspelling is very elegant and that is because people spend years developing a unique signing style and an effective way of interpreting.  

What I have learned about networking while being in the pathway program is that there are people who genuinely love to connect people with the right people. I learned that very quickly when I talked to Audrey about my Research Fello project and how she connected me with teachers in Mexico who were eager to have discussions in English about gesturing. Something that I feel hinders my networking is finding the energy and time to connect with the right people. I want to attend ASL events, expos and conferences but it is hard for me as a full-time student working a full-time job. But the nice thing is a lot of things are online now.