Next fall, many students in the Class of 2026 will follow the traditional path after graduation: packing up their cars, moving into dorm rooms, and beginning college in the United States. However, senior Núria Lainez Clapers is preparing for a different kind of journey, one that will take her back to Spain, her birthplace.
After graduation, Lainez Clapers plans to take a gap year to prepare for the Spanish entrance exams through an online academy. The exams are required for students hoping to attend college in Spain, and the score she receives will determine which universities she is eligible to attend.
In the future, Lainez Clapers hopes to become either an interpreter or a translator. While she is still deciding which career path fits her best, she believes the classes she takes in college will help her figure that out. If she chooses translation, her interest in creative work, such as books or movie scripts, aligns closely with that path. Meanwhile, her interests in government, law, and freelance work make interpretation especially appealing to her as well.
According to Lainez Clapers going back to Spain feels like returning to her original home, and is excited to be near relatives who still live there. She was born in the Catalan region of Spain and has always spoken Catalan at home.
According to Lainez Clapers, because she was born in Spain, studying abroad was always an option in the back of her mind. Once she realized she wanted to pursue languages professionally, she and her family agreed that returning to Spain would provide both educational and financial advantages.
“My father had said, ‘Well, if you study in Spain, not only is it more affordable, but you’re going to be learning in a country that speaks the Romance language,’ and I already have my citizenship there, so it would be very easy to be able just to go back,” Lainez Clapers said.
Although she once considered going into a science-related field, her experience taking Latin in middle school changed her perspective and introduced her to a love of languages.
“Magistra Paradis is one of the teachers who had a great impact on me. She made it very easy for me to fall in love with learning languages,” Lainez Clapers said.
According to Latin teacher Kori Pasternak, Lainez Clapers’ teacher from sophomore to senior year, Lainez Clapers’ passion for languages was also very transparent.
“I knew she was a language enthusiast right away, she would share with me her adventures in translating various shows that she was watching in multiple languages and I was always really impressed with her eagerness to connect Latin to the languages that she knew and was learning,” Pasternak said.
Since then, Lainez Clapers has dedicated herself to studying and maintaining several Romance languages, including Spanish, Catalan, Latin, and Portuguese. She grew up speaking Catalan at home and continues to practice and strengthen her writing skills in the language outside of school.
Choosing to attend college in another country and move away from her immediate family is not a path many of her classmates are taking. According to Lainez Clapers, one of the most difficult parts of the process was dealing with the fear of missing out while many of her peers were publicly committing to colleges in the United States. Since the application process for schools abroad takes longer, she spent much of her senior year unsure of exactly what her plans would look like.
Despite that uncertainty, Lainez Clapers feels confident that taking a nontraditional route will ultimately help her achieve her goals.
“I know this will be much more beneficial for me after college. So I don’t worry too much about taking a different route because I’m going to get to the same place as everyone else. It’s just going to look different for now,” Lainez Clapers said.
