Email: danbrodkin@gmail.com
Comps Title: Backward control in Minangkabau (EA)
Current Employment: PhD Candidate (Linguistics) at University of California Santa Cruz
“When I was a student, the linguistics major helped me develop interests and connections in a foreign region which often lead to work in diplomacy, international relations, education, and academia. At Carleton, our department’s field methods class gave me an opportunity to engage with a language of Indonesia and form lasting bonds with people, cultures, and languages of the area. With the department’s support, I received two state department scholarships (CLS and a Fulbright Research Fellowship) which allowed me to spend roughly a year in Indonesia conducting research on an endangered language of West Sulawesi.
While these experiences have obvious personal value, these scholarships look great on your resume, segue directly into careers in diplomacy, politics, education, academia, and law, and allow you to meet other people pushing toward these same goals. And, as the numbers show, the Carleton linguistics department does a phenomenal job of setting its students up to become competitive applicants for these scholarships and opportunities. For those interested in internationally-oriented career paths with a focus on particular regions and languages, I can’t recommend the major enough.
Words of advice:
• Take Field Methods
• Pay attention to prosody
• If you’re ever having a crisis of faith, remember: at some level of abstraction, syntax really is real.
• Keep the lingressive tradition alive!”