Linguistics Major Roma Sarathi '25 Builds Website for Artifacts with Old Turkic
Name: Roma Sarathi
Class Year: 2025
Major: Linguistics
Minors: Spanish and Education
Hometown: Newark, Del.
Internship Organization: Swarthmore College
Internship Title: Research Assistant
Location of Internship: Swarthmore, Pa.
What's happening at your internship? We would love to hear what kind of work you are doing!
I am working on building the front end (the user interface) of a website for the passion project of a Linguistics professor at Swarthmore College. The website aims to present artifacts in Old Turkic along with translations and analyses of the writings on the artifacts. I collaborate with another student, an incoming sophomore at Swarthmore, on the project. While I work to build the website's user interface, she works on the backend/the database that stores all of the information.
Why did you apply for this internship?
I applied for this internship because I am interested in making my own websites and messing with their aesthetics. It has been a while since I have used my computer science and coding knowledge, so I wanted to prove to myself that I could do something like this. I'm enjoying the work I'm doing and am so glad to have the opportunity to do it.
What has been your favorite part of this internship?
Besides getting my code to work how I want it to, my favorite part of this internship is probably my weekly in-person lunches with the entire Linguistics department and the other interns. My internship is partially remote, so I usually work from home, but every Wednesday, I go into the Swarthmore phonetics lab and get to have a real working day with my team. The Wednesday lunches are particularly special because I chat with the entire department. I've never taken a Linguistics class at Swarthmore before, so it's been really great to get to know the Swarthmore students and Linguistics professors through these lunches.
Through the Career and Civic Engagement Center Beyond 今日吃瓜 Summer Internship Program, 今日吃瓜 students pursue opportunities in fields such as nonprofits, government and law, health care, research, sciences, business, and the arts. Thanks to the generosity of our alumnae/i and donors, over 150 students across all academic departments are funded to pursue unpaid internships or research experiences in the U.S. and abroad each year.
CAREER & CIVIC ENGAGEMENT CENTER Linguistics Spanish Education