Why hello there stranger

Hi blog reader! My name is Julya, I use she/her pronouns, and I’m a second-year psychology major who’s considering either minoring or double-majoring in linguistics. I have no idea what I want to do with my life yet, but I know I love to study the human mind and human behaviour, as well as any and all things related to languages. I am Brazilian (born and raised in São Paulo, Brasil, with an S because that’s how you write it the right way, aka in portuguese), but I am half Greek because my dad’s side of the family is all from Crete. My dad’s generation of kids was the first to be born in Brasil after my grandparents immigrated, so we joke that my dad is “nationally made with imported parts”. My mom’s side of the family is a bit of a mixing pot, since each of her grandparents came from a different place (Portugal, Italy, Lebanon, and Brasil). So technically, I am part all of these, but for the sake of convenience, I usually just say I’m half Brazilian, half Greek, and part Lebanese when someone asks about my middle name.

I moved to Vancouver for college, and so far, I have been loving it, although the “we have sunlight from 07:30-16:30 in winters” and the “rain, just enough to make you do something about it but not enough to be actual rain” parts of Canada still trip my brain up. Some of my hobbies and interests include reading, playing games (board games, video games, RPGs, etc), solving puzzles, most things arts and crafts (like drawing, colouring, crochet, origami, anything artsy and hands-on), and any and all things related to music (listening, singing, nerding out over how musicians use dissonance, bragging about my younger brother going to music school and how he’s the best singer I know and how I am so proud of him, literally everything).

So… why am I taking this class?? A small part of it is that I needed something to fulfill a degree requirement, but that is a very tiny part. The big reason is I love studying Brazilian culture and art and its evolution. And while I have had the opportunity to read some of the classics of our literature, I wanted the opportunity to read more. Furthermore, I wanted to understand what was going on in other places in the world while the history I know was happening. This class seemed like the perfect opportunity to combine all of that, since I would get to read a bunch of cool stuff written during my favourite time period to study Brazilian arts in. So far, all my expectations have been beyond met. This course seems like the most interesting and perfectly formatted way for me to go about exploring this. It also helps that I love discussing books. I expect to have a lot of fun, read a lot of good books, have very productive discussions, and learn things about life and maybe myself that make me slightly uncomfortable because I projected onto something in a book wayy too much.

I took RMST 300 last semester, and it was the most fun class ever. It felt as if two of my other classes had given birth to it, those classes being linguistics and Latin. Even though these classes are very different from one another, they both focus on language and how it’s changed the world around it AND how it’s been changed by the world. So I am very excited to explore the evolution of language through a new, less linguistics and more literature, way.

And yes, you read that right, Latin. Why Latin? I always thought it was cool, so why not? It’s the most challenging but most rewarding class in my roster, and I love it so much. I also think being able to tell people I speak Latin is the most badass thing ever. Whenever I tell someone I do Latin for the shits and giggles, they, without fail, look like I am crazy. Maybe I am. I have fun tho.

Anyway, to sum it up, I am so excited for this course and to read some cool books, so we’ll see how it goes!! :DD

Thank you so much for reading :))

PS- I am so bummed Clarice Lispector and Italo Calvino are in the same week. I was so excited to read both of those. I love both of them so much. Why did you do this to me. I’ll cope, but I will also grumble about it a bit because it’s funny. But why.