by Nath Freires

Hi everyone! My name is Natanaele (but everyone calls me Nath), and I am currently interning at Art Spark Texas. Home for me is in Brazil, but Bennington College has now become my second home. 

I believe that everyone has been asked that silly yet multifaceted question “if you had a superpower, what would it be?” at least once in their lives. Of course, some people might think that it is an easy question to answer, but as soon as you start reflecting on all the possibilities you now have (well, imaginarily have), your creativity and mind will take you places. Yes, flying is pretty cool, but as a person who loves to get to know new stories, that would not be my first pick. Being super strong would come in handy, too. And invisibility… and telekinesis… But none of those things would be my first pick. 

Communication is something very important in a community, and that can happen in many different ways. You can have written, verbal, non-verbal, and visual communication, and the list goes on. Since I was young, I became fascinated with the plurality of our world, and the different ways humans can understand each other. Because of my constant curiosity, I decided to start learning English by myself, so I could finally understand what my favorite songs were saying. As I grew older, my linguistics goals changed a little bit, and English became my target language for many other reasons. 

So, back to the superpower… Out of everything I could pick, I would pick the capacity of being able to communicate with everyone around the globe. To many people, that would look like they know every language out there. However, as I said before, since communication goes beyond that, I believe that many other skills would be included in this superpower package.

When I was younger, I made a little friend on the beach. She was about my age, I believe. Maybe a bit older, because she was taller, but if so, not that much older. I was around nine at the time. Our friendship probably lasted around an hour. She spoke an entirely different language from me, but even with this barrier, we communicated in our way. Since I only knew a few words in English like numbers, colors, and a few lines of Justin Bieber’s songs, you can imagine that we did not get very deep in our conversation. And we were kids, so back then, pretending we were mermaids was way more interesting than any other thing we could do. 

I had other similar experiences to that, during which I would have been really happy if superpowers were a thing. 

As I explore more of my passion for communication in college, my curiosity about the different ways people share information, express their feelings, and show their needs only grows. Sometimes, you don’t have to say anything to make yourself heard. We can see that happening a lot in our daily lives. Newborns can’t speak, but they find other ways to be noticed. I also believe that it is important to explore how to make communication more efficient for different groups of people too. Hopefully, as a society, we can find new forms to close communication gaps and facilitate the different forms of how people express themselves. 

Nath Freires is a junior at Bennington College, studying Computer Science and Communication. She enjoys spending her free time dancing, playing soccer, and making videos.