Girl Meets World

I will say, it's a bit daunting to write a post when you don't know who is going to read it. I feel like I'm talking into the void without a real sense of who is listening. I'm already familiar with the concept of oversharing on the internet—we've all been doing it for years now on social media—but tailoring my rhetoric to a graduate-level communications class takes a bit more effort and creativity. Since this first post is just supposed to be about me, I guess there's no wrong way to do it. So here we go:

My name is Anna Friberg and I am a 21-year-old Clark student studying Spanish with a minor in Sociology. I'm also working on my accelerated Master's degree in Communications, hence enrollment in this class.

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My resume is currently quite short, since COVID ruined some internship possibilities for me this summer, but I did spend the fall semester of my junior year abroad in Seville, Spain. I lived with a widowed woman named Carmen who didn't speak a word of English: if I wanted to say something, I had to say it in Spanish. It was tough at first to express emotions in a language that was not my own, but by the end of my 4-month stay, she and I could talk about anything. 

It was a fantastic semester and I'm grateful that it wasn't cut short by the pandemic—who knows when I'll be able to do that much traveling again?

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Fast forward to the spring semester, I was stuck in my Worcester apartment from March to May as I finished up my online Clark classes. Quarantining in a city is tough, simply because of the volume of people. My weekly grocery store trips were the most social interaction I got to have. Heading back to Maine for the summer was the best thing I could've done.

Starting in June, I worked at an adorable outdoor farm restaurant called The Well @ Jordan's Farm. Large parties can make reservations in advance to be seated in these wooden gazebos (which are perfect for social distancing) and everything on the menu is local and fresh. I made a good amount of money, a couple new friends, and lots of freckles. It's sad to know that I won't be going back next summer because I'll be in Worcester taking grad classes.

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Now we're caught up to present-day. I'm living off-campus with my three roommates, and we do our best to keep each other sane because life is currently kinda crazy. This semester I'm taking my Spanish capstone, which will be concluded with a 20-page paper (I've never written 20 pages in my life, let alone in a different language). My preferred forms of procrastination are snacking on frozen cherries, doodling potential tattoo ideas in my notebooks, and making Spotify playlists.

It's hard to predict what the rest of this semester + next semester are going to look like, and I've quickly learned over the past few months that trying to make plans is pointless because things are always subject to change. At this point, I'm just along for the ride!