Finding the Words

In 2024, Aidan Mokalla ’25 traveled to Tajikistan to study Persian as part of the Critical Language Scholarship program.

For Aidan Mokalla ’25, learning Persian was about more than studying a centuries-old language spoken by millions. It was also about communicating with his grandmother, who taught Persian literature in Iran.

“It’s my grandma’s only language, pretty much,” Aidan says. “I’ve always known how important the language is on a personal level in my family, but also on a cultural level.”

For Aidan, the personal and the cultural collided when he was selected from more than 5,000 applicants to join the Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) Program, allowing him to study Persian in Tajikistan in the summer of 2024.

The CLS Program, which is sponsored by the U.S. government, was founded to increase the number of Americans studying foreign languages. Aidan was so passionate about joining that he applied three years in a row before being accepted.

In Tajikistan, Aidan lived with a host family in a Soviet-style apartment, while taking four hours of classes per day and spending two to three hours on cultural activities (including calligraphy, cooking, dance, and poetry).

Aidan also enjoyed hitchhiking across the country, which is common in Tajikistan. “I really miss that sense of kinship,” he says. “It’s a different climate and how you interact with strangers is different.”

That climate transformed some of Aidan’s interactions closer to home. “I’ve had a conversation with my grandmother for the first time without having someone else interpreting for me,” he says. “Which is really cool.”

Tags: Academics, International, Students