Growing up in San Francisco, Owen Myers knew he wanted to learn another language, and Spanish seemed a clear choice. His high school Spanish teacher inspired him with a deep dive into literature, but Owen soon realized he wanted to go beyond reading and writing to be able to speak and communicate in the language. A summer in Madrid with UCEAP—where his professors and classmates were from UC Berkeley—served as an ideal initial step to deepen his coursework as a Spanish minor. But it was a semester in Santiago, Chile that would prove a turning point, both for his fluency in the language and sense of himself. “This is not something I would have said before I went to Chile,” he said. "I can think in Spanish now. That little mental change, which sounds kind of minor to someone who doesn't understand how that feels--I think that was the moment that I really felt like I was bilingual."
I can think in Spanish now. That little mental change, which sounds kind of minor to someone who doesn’t understand how that feels—I think that was the moment that I really felt like I was bilingual.
Arriving in Santiago, Owen initially stayed with a host family before transitioning to a co-op house for international students, where the lingua franca was Spanish. One of only two Americans in the house, he credits his living situation with accelerating his fluency. During the week he attended classes at the University of Chile alongside Chileans and other international students, taking courses in his major area of interest: political economy, Latin America and world affairs.
Owen relished the opportunity to engage in political and historical analysis outside a US institutional framework. “The US is a huge part of Chile’s political history, especially with the Pinochet dictatorship,” he said. “So to hear about [professors’] opinion and perspective on the ways the US has been involved in Latin America and the effects that it’s had—the Pinochet dictatorship did not happen that long ago, my professors were alive during that time. It’s not like they’re talking about some political experiment that happened in a foreign country generations ago, they’re speaking to their lived experiences. It hits you differently when they talk about their experiences and their family members being persecuted.”
Now back in Berkeley for his senior year, Owen is invested in maintaining his connection to the Spanish language regardless of where his impending graduation takes him. “I think it works my brain in a different way than my typical studies do, allows me a little bit of intellectual freedom in that way,” he said. “I work on it for myself, to make myself a more well-rounded person and to give myself all of these skills that I’ll hopefully be able to use in life. It’s nice to have that drive to do that for myself outside of any other motivation.”
