Marina Snetkova '00

This summer I had an opportunity to conduct research in political science in my native country Latvia, a small country on the coast of Baltic Sea that received its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. My family moved to the United States when I was just fifteen years old, so politics did not interest me that much then.

At the time of my award, I was a senior at Hampton Roads Academy, getting ready to enter Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. to double-major in political science and German.
The Tayloe Scholarship helped me satisfy my interest in the politics of my native country, and has also given me food for thought about my other interest-foreign languages. My visit let me practice my Russian and Latvian, and I have realized that knowledge of a language comes back to a person with practice. I was afraid that I had forgotten Latvian completely, since unlike Russian, it is not my native language. Fortunately, I was proven wrong with the help of Mr. Tayloe's Scholarship.