Kayleigh Karinen never expected to end up in Oklahoma, first arriving to be a member of the cheerleading program.
When she came to OSU to be a member of OSU’s nationally recognized cheerleading program in 2014, she was also offered an academic scholarship that made OSU an opportunity she felt she could not refuse. It was the beginning of an academic journey that has since taken her around the globe to countries such as Spain and Chile.
A double major in Spanish and philosophy, she accredits her passion for Spanish and philosophy to her instructors at OSU, all while competing as a member of the OSU All-Girl cheer team from 2014 to 2016.
“Philosophy truly challenges me to understand my own thoughts and opinions,” Karinen said. “I believe we must question ourselves and expose ourselves to thought foreign to us, especially that in which we may not agree with, in order to genuinely understand why we think what we think.”
Her passion and fascination with languages is based upon the same foundation: the desire to understand more of the world around her, and as we learn more of the world around us, the more we learn about ourselves.
“Merely speaking another language can introduce a new concept into our lives that we previously did not know existed,” she said. “Studies abroad make you learn more about yourself, what it means to be an American. For me, I have an entirely new appreciation for where I am from.”
Karinen is one of the few students to have received the Bailey Memorial Trust Scholarship twice since its inauguration in 1985. She plans on expanding her linguistic repertoire by spending the spring semester learning Finnish in Helsinki, Finland. She is also preparing an application for the Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship in Colombia for the 2017-2018 academic year. Her academic aspirations include obtaining a Master’s and a Ph.D. in Hispanic Linguistics which would allow her to conduct further research in this discipline.
Rather than merely accept praise for her accomplishments, Karinen will be the first to say that she did not achieve all this alone.
“Looking back at what I have done and am planning to do, it may seem like it has all been planned and I knew what I wanted to do all along, however it was not that way at all,” Karinen said. “I actually didn’t even plan on studying abroad once, but the outstanding staff in the College of Arts and Sciences and my professors in the Spanish department encouraged me to go abroad and introduced me to opportunities that are available.”
“As always, the best is yet to come,” she added with a bright, hopeful smile.
Story by Kevin Karaki