As a first generation college student, Olivia Ochoa's transition to Cornell was filled with much uncertainty. She first dabbled with the Spanish major, being a native speaker and having an interest in language access and breaking down language barriers, but landed upon the American Studies major soon after taking cross-listed classes.
“A lot of my interests are in how the U.S. can have an effect on other countries, especially in Latin America, being from Mexico,” Ochoa said. “Getting to see how U.S. interventionism plays into the history that we’ve learned has been super fascinating in American Studies.”
She touts Professor Maria Cristina Garcia for playing a transformative role in her understanding of immigration in American studies through classes such as AMST 1802: Introduction to Latinos in U.S. History, AMST 2251: U.S. Immigration Narratives, and AMST 4851: Refugees.
Ochoa applied these classroom experiences to her past two summer internships at the Latin America Working Group and Migration Policy Institute (MPI), both of which were funded by Cornell's Arts & Sciences Career Development Office.
As an intern for the Events & Communication Team at MPI this past summer, Ochoa helped plan the think tank’s webinar and private events, create guest lists, curate an Instagram strategy guide and Spanish translation guide, and gave an end of term presentation about her research within the AMST department.
“I got to do an end of term culmination presentation on some research that I did with Professor Maria Cristina Garcia,” Ochoa said. “I wrote a paper in her class [AMST 2251], collecting oral histories and I took that same research of the oral histories I collected and personalised it a bit more, comparing it to more of the policy work and research that MPI had done and I got to give a presentation on it, which was pretty cool to incorporate my American Studies research into the internship I was doing.”
Despite majoring in American Studies, Ochoa will still be minoring in Spanish and is currently writing her honors creative thesis with Professor Edmundo Paz Soldan, in the Spanish Department. Her thesis serves as a collection of short stories that centers the immigrant experience and the role change may have in migration. Through this medium, she will be able to incorporate immigrant voices from her network of professors, international students, family members, and local workers.
Aware that language and immigration and intertwined, Ochoa also serves as the Co-President of the Translator Interpreters Program (TIP), which is a student run program that certifies translators and interpreters to go out to the greater New York State to volunteer at emergency and non emergency situations.
Just last semester the Translator Interpreters Program was awarded the Perkins Prize for Interracial and Intercultural Peace & Harmony from the Office of Student and Campus Life. “Sometimes, doing that work can be very difficult because everyone likes to hear about it but no one likes to know about social justice in the community. It’s hard to get people involved in it so it was really great to get a pat on the back and $5000 was also pretty nice to have in our pockets too.”
“Being a daughter of two Mexican immigrants, the immigrant experience has been relevant in my life and has been a lens and framework in which I see the world,” she said.
The constant connections that she has been able to make with literature, government, language, and current events is the primary reason Ochoa chose the AMST major in the first place. “I am so excited to see where the American Studies department goes in the future and it’s only going to become more and more relevant as the decades go on.”
