Meet our Intern: Ulises Aguilar

Last semester, we had SMU student Ulises Aguilar as a Texas-Mexico intern. Read his post about his experience with the Center below.  

Post by: Ulises Aguilar

Last semester, I had the pleasure of interning at the Texas-Mexico Center. I worked on policy reports, translated sections of those reports, wrote tweets for the Texas-Mexico Center account, and made infographics promoting the research conducted here. When it came to the knowledge required for my duties, a lot had to do with immigration, whether in economic or social settings. Some information I already knew, but a lot of it I had to learn from reading current and previous research papers that the Texas-Mexico Center had published.

The Texas-Mexico Center internship was a great learning experience for me as I had never been too confident with my Spanish in formal settings, and getting the chance to constantly communicate and work in Spanish has shown me that it is something that I can do properly with enough practice. A lot of that practice came in written form as the Texas-Mexico Center appeals to both English and Spanish readers, so I often had to translate a lot of my work from English to Spanish. As a result of this, I noticed improvements in my vocabulary. Being able to utilize a lot of what I learned here regarding economic and immigration terms was a personal indicator of my development as I was able to use them while at home to talk with my family about current events. I also grew more comfortable with accents as I kept emailing my sponsors back and forth solely in Spanish.

There were a few challenges along the way, like getting used to the programs necessary for my work (Teams, Mailchimp, and Hootsuite), but the Center team had the patience to guide me along the way whenever I needed help understating something. I would say that my biggest accomplishment while interning here was learning how to do a little bit of photoshopping in order to create research-themed infographics. On top of all that, being provided with the opportunity to see what goes into the research that affects public policy was truly the highlight of my experience here at the Texas-Mexico Center.

Since I was little, I have always been told that the future of this nation rests on my generation’s shoulders. I was never told how we were supposed to bring change or fix the world’s problems exactly, and it wasn’t until a few years ago that I discovered that the answer to bringing change was public policy. Understanding a part of the process of policymaking is integral to bringing the change that my peers and I desire. I hope that I gain more opportunities to continue my growth in this subject in the future, but the research perspective that I gained here is a great first step.