Ryan Coates '15
Hometown: Escondido, CA
What’s the one thing that Middlebury students should NOT graduate without doing?
Every Middlebury student should spend a summer here before graduating. It is fascinating to see the transformation that takes place for the language schools and the expanded sense of community brought on by the language pledge, as well as the beautiful weather. Whether you stay as a student, an employee, or to conduct research, I think it’s important that students experience Midd in the summertime since it’s a really cool environment that is really quite unique to our school.
Design a J-Term class or workshop.
Fortunately, my ideal J-term class has already been designed. It’s a translation studies course, where a variety of students, with experience in different languages, work to translate texts to their native languages. The really cool part of the course is that students speak all different languages, and can work in the specific languages that they know, interest them, and need to work on.
If you could “Freaky Friday” your way into the body of any professor on campus, who would it be and why?
Patricia Saldarriaga, because she is one of the most fascinating and compassionate people I have ever met. I would love to see people through her eyes.
How would you spend a beautiful day at Middlebury?
I love to spend beautiful days at Middlebury out in the sun. As a native Southern Californian, sunshine is an amenity I am very used to, but living here in Vermont has taught me to appreciate it a lot more since there is so much less of it. So when I can, I like to spend beautiful days outside studying or hanging out with friends.
What did you do on your Febmester? Regs, feel free to share what you would have done.
I would have definitely spent a Febmester abroad in Latin America teaching English. I’m probably saying this now because I’m very excited about spending next year abroad, but I would have really would have enjoyed spending a semester teaching in a Spanish speaking country.
