the profession
I am a Spanish instructor and Ph.D. student in Second Language Acquisition in the Department of Linguistics, Languages, and Cultures at Michigan State University, where I’m working on a research project that examines the correction processes in the acquisition of Spanish as a foreign language, as well as other projects that aim to develop teacher training initiatives across platforms and language contexts.
My background is in applied linguistics / computational linguistics. I had the privilege to study applied linguistics in the top programs in my field, both in Venezuela, my home country, as well as in the US – for my masters at NAU through Fulbright, and now for my Ph.D. at MSU. I used to be distant to, and intimidated by, coding, mainly because I never thought it had any relevance to what I was doing in my field. But thanks to a couple of key moments in my career, and some really inspiring colleagues/instructors, I am now fully in love with all things programming/data science.
For the past two years, my focus has been on using my Ph.D. time for leveraging my programming/research skills. After I discovered GNU Emacs – and Vim motions, 🤫 – I am always looking for new ways to make my workflow faster and more efficient. So I primarily spend my time working on my config, of course.
🤘🏾 the hobby
I feel very fortunate to be doing so many of things that I love a lot right now. That includes my job, but also spending lots of time playing drums and going to concerts.
Fluffy lounging.
I started playing drums when I was in high school, 20 years ago! Back then, I was playing along to the bands of my era (Audioslave, Linkin Park, System of a Down, etc.). But then, I had to go heavier, right? I went quickly from Metallica, Slipknot, and Slayer, to the real extreme ones – I’m talking Krisiun, Bathory, Vader, Nile… Every year I had to live, breathe, and play faster. Then, as my playing (and hopefully my mindset) became more mature, I delved into more technical, more musically involved stuff, until I discovered bands like Death, Cynic, and Meshuggah. I did flirt with jazz for a while, and I learned a lot, but metal is my true love.
For the past year, I’ve started to be intentional about going to the concerts of the bands I love. Watching Cynic for the first time was very special; not just because of their flawless playing, but mostly because Paul Masvidal transpires so much peace, and because Cynic is not a crazy famous band, so it was a very small, intimate concert. By comparison, Ulver (already very niche band) had 140,895 monthly listeners as of March 28 2024, whereas Cynic had only 44,859 monthly listeners.
Paul from Cynic.
I’ve already checked off some of the bands I had in my todo list, like Nile, Meshuggah, Cynic, Depeche Mode. The next thing in my todo list is to dive into the pit and hopefully stage dive, although I have to be careful at my age 👴🏾.
Feel free to reach out! Here’s my CV and my socials below.