Claire Branigan ’11

My time as a Spanish major at Grinnell has served me very well professionally and academically. Since graduating in 2011, my Spanish language skills have been invaluable to me as I have depended on them in two different jobs and now in my research as a PhD student in cultural anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The Spanish major provided me with very sound preparation in both written and speaking skills. As a student at Grinnell, I studied abroad in Argentina and, because of my sound language preparation, was able to directly enroll in the University of Buenos Aires, volunteer, and make Argentinean friends (who I am still in close contact with). My first job after Grinnell was working as a case manager at an immigration law firm in Minneapolis, MN. The majority of the people that I worked with were monolingual Spanish speakers and my language skills ended up being one of my strongest, and most important, assets. In addition to immigration law, I also worked as a community organizer and educator in tenants’ rights, again, serving primarily Spanish-speaking people and families in Minneapolis. Currently, I am pursuing my doctorate degree and have begun to conduct long term field work in Argentina. In all of these cases I felt very confident in my Spanish language skills—a confidence that I owe to my excellent preparation at Grinnell and specifically the Spanish major.