The Llama Ledger - Bard College at Simon's Rock's Student Newspaper

Issue date: 9/5/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Nicole Myles Mariela Wong was hired as a new professor of Spanish.

Over a traditional Andalucian breakfast, the new professor of Spanish language and Spanish literature, Mariela Wong, revealed the mystery behind her international accent, accounted her journeys up and down the Western Hemisphere, and expressed what she hopes to do for the students at Simon's Rock.

She was born in Maracaibo, Venezuela, into a traditional Chinese family. "My parents convinced us that they didn't understand Spanish," Wong said, "that they didn't understand anything. Now that I think back to it, I think I was tricked." So, she grew up with the language of her heritage, Cantonese, and the language of her country, Spanish.

At 15, she moved to New York City to attend Washington Irving High School. "All I knew was 'yes' and 'thank you'. I was very polite. I was the most polite person in Chinatown." But shortly after, Wong was able to attend Hartwick College in Oneonta, N.Y., for her undergraduate degree, where she double majored in Spanish and Economics and double minored in American History and Mathematics.

"My first love was math. I loved math. I liked Linear Algebra and Differential Equations. They were awesome," said Wong, "Well, actually I took Differential Equations because I liked the way it sounded."

She then worked on Wall Street for five years and then returned to school at Stony Brook University in Long Island where she realized her future in math may have been dimmer than her other passion, Spanish Literature.

"It was a good transition between the two," and so she went on to receive her PhD in the study of the latter.

It was during her time at Hartwick that she studied abroad to Madrid and then conducted cultural studies in Mexico for three months during graduate school at Stony Brook.

It is these cultural exchanges that Wong wishes to bring most into the classroom.

"We should definitely learn to appreciate it." She is currently a professor of Accelerated Beginning Spanish I and Intermediate Spanish II and she hopes to connect the language in the textbooks to the culture of the people speaking those languages.

"A lot of people miss out on the cultural aspect of a language. In order to speak to someone and not just speak at someone you must know where they come from, who they are, what it is they're used to."

Continued...

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