At an age when most children are just beginning to learn about the United States of America, Bre Bailey (IAFS 鈥�17) was already fascinated with many different countries around the world. The Colorado Springs native remembers watching the movie Atlantis: The Lost Empire as a child and becoming fascinated at the idea of researching and exploring new places. When she began college, Bailey pursued these global interests by declaring a major in International Affairs at CU-麻豆影院. "Though I knew it would take a lot of work, I never lost sight of my childhood dreams to explore the world - and especially the languages within it."
Bailey was awarded a Global Grant scholarship and secured a competitive internship for the fall 2015 semester in Brussels, Belgium. Maximizing this opportunity to be in Europe, she added on a summer 2015 internship in Lithuania. She spent the summer living and learning in the Baltics, interning as an English language camp counselor, and learning European history by exploring and visiting museums. One afternoon, she stumbled upon the Museum of Baltic Resistance in Latvia, and saw an image there that both puzzled and intrigued her.
The image was a colorful display of various pie charts illustrating the disparity of languages spoken in the Baltics. It聽explained聽how all the Baltics spoke mostly their own languages before the USSR took over, but then after the Soviet regime, Latvia and Estonia had a much higher proportion of Russian speakers than Lithuania did. These proportions have remained relatively steady in all three countries even a decade later. Bailey took a photograph of it so that she could ponder over it for the rest of her time in the Baltics. During her semester in Belgium, she took a class in multilingualism and her interests became clear. 鈥淚 kept circling back to that graph from the museum in Latvia,鈥� explains Bailey, 鈥淚 found myself observing languages, dialects, and how this reflects history and culture in Europe.鈥� She took her observations all across Europe, as she visited 23 European countries in her six months abroad.
Today, Bailey has returned to the CU-麻豆影院 campus and declared a second major in linguistics. She hopes to delve deeper into researching global linguistics in the Baltics, and she has applied for the International Affairs Honors Program. Specifically, she is fascinated in studying聽why Lithuania escaped the Russophone fates of Latvia and Estonia.聽"It's not just a linguistic study - it's a study of policy and pragmatics affecting language use," explains Bailey.聽After she graduates, she plans to travel, earn a Master鈥檚 degree, and maybe one day work abroad. She hasn鈥檛 lost sight of that curious girl she once was, watching Atlantis: The Lost Empire, dreaming of all the exciting discoveries to be made in the world.
