Deepika graduated in 2019 with a major in Linguistics and a minor in Arabic Studies. During her time at UO, she took three years of Arabic, classical Arabic classes, and anthropology and religion classes related to Islam and the Middle East.

Since leaving UO, she worked as a site coordinator for Americorps’ Reading Partners at an elementary school in Sunnyvale, California from 2019-20, where she facilitated tutoring sessions for students learning how to improve their reading. After her service term with Reading Partners, she spent the next year publishing a mystery/thriller book. Now, she has started a stationary brand called Dream On Notebooks, a self-care brand that sells journals and notebooks. The site for the brand is dreamonnotebooks.squarespace.com.

How has the study of Arabic been important to your life and career? 

I began my college journey wanting to take Arabic as a foreign language, after taking an Arabic elective class in middle school. Since then, Arabic has been very important in my academic life, as if I hadn’t taken it, I wouldn’t have made life-long friendships and mentors, and I wouldn’t have had a broad understanding of different cultures and languages that I have today. The skills and passion for learning Arabic went beyond just learning it in a classroom- I was able to use this skill in a cross-cultural setting on campus, from attending weekly language circles at the Mills International Center, being part of the Arab Student Union club, and joining UO’s Peer Mentor program. I highly recommend future Arabic language- learning students immerse themselves in these experiences as it helped improve my Arabic by a large scale. 

What has learning Arabic meant to you personally?

Taking Arabic has increased my love for writing, learning languages and discovering new songs. For me, language learning is so much more than just a page of homework every night. It’s about connections, gaining new skills and using a language in a social setting. I have gained all these just by taking Arabic that even after leaving UO, I have still retained the knowledge of the language.  I have gained such an appreciation for the language and culture and history from learning it for three years. I can now add the lifelong skill to my repertoire of being an intermediate speaker in my favorite language. And most importantly, I have sustained positive friendships with fellow UO students from all over the world, whom I’ve discovered from taking Arabic.