By Sophia Harris
Editor-in-Chief
Spirituality is the connection formed between your body and your spirit and the acknowledgment that those separate vehicles come together in this moment to create an individual.
If you have practiced meditation or you’re a spiritual person, you understand this connection all too well. Sofia Wilson experienced it for the first time during a sunrise in Kalimpong, India.
Framingham might be where Wilson spends most of her time, but she has traveled over 30,000 miles.
Wilson doesn’t consider herself a world traveler, but most would, as she has been to India, Portugal, and Canada in just the past two years.
She is a senior majoring in both English and political science with a digital humanities minor who dreams of becoming a lawyer when she “grows up.” Her passion for being a lawyer is inspired by a need to advocate for the underrepresented. Wilson is a strong advocate for “what is right” and helping those in need. Being a lawyer is one way to do that while also using her research and critical thinking talents that have been sharpened as an undergraduate.
On each trip, she has discovered a part of herself - her spirituality in India, her ancestral roots in Portugal, and her identity in Canada, all while being an accomplished student at Framingham State.
Wilson said these trips have shaped her into the person she is today and may have altered her path in life.
Wilson’s first trip was to India in 2022, her sophomore year, during the FSU Faculty-Led Study Abroad J-Term program, which provided her the opportunity to undertake a shortened version of study abroad. The experience was service-based and culturally immersive, though there was no academic credit.
Twelve students and two trip leaders took three airplanes over two days, followed by multiple taxi trips to the oasis of Kalimpong, India.
Spending just under three weeks in India as part of the experience, Wilson traveled to Kalimpong and Darjeeling in West Bengal, and the tourist cities of Agra and New Delhi. With each new location came a different experience that shaped how she would view India forever.
When she arrived in Kalimpong, after an approximate six-hour drive from New Delhi, it was around 10 p.m.
“Our hosts were still up, and they fed us, and then they showed us our rooms, and I remember, not panicking, but I was nervous, because I was like, ‘Oh God, I don't know how I'm going to remember where everything is,’” Wilson said.
On her first morning in Kalimpong, Wilson said she experienced a deeply spiritual moment while sitting on the mountainside.
“I woke up super jet-lagged and I just remember waking up super early in the morning, and I didn’t know what to do because everyone was asleep, so I just went outside and I sat on this little bench, and it was really nice. It was a really nicely contemplative moment for the first day,” Wilson said.
Although she said it was hard to put into words exactly what she was feeling, she experienced “one of those moments” when she felt a “distinct spiritual connection to where I was.” At that moment, Wilson said she knew this was going to be a life-changing trip.
“It was really peaceful. I saw a hummingbird, and I was like, ‘Oh, I like that,’” Wilson said.
Over two weeks, she connected with a family in the community, who showed her their way of life. For example, clothes were washed outside under a small faucet against a rock with slivers of soap. Food was cooked over a small fire outside or over the warmth of a portable stovetop. She said she learned how much Americans take for granted.
In Darjeeling, Wilson completed some service learning. Here, over three days, she worked with young monks at a monastery. These children were surrendered to the monastery by their parents and ranged in age from 2 to 18. Parents who could not financially support raising a child or who wanted their children to have an overall better life surrendered their children to the monastery to become monks. If at any time they were able to support their children again, they could come back to retrieve them, but most children stay there until they turn 18.
Only boys and men reside in the monastery, so the younger children were very drawn to the female students in the group, sensing maternal affection. Despite the language barrier, Wilson and the children communicated through “laughs, hugs, and the occasional sticking out of a tongue when one of the children beat me at yard games or soccer,” she said.
Wilson said during her time at the monastery, she led painting classes and outside games and joined them in their daily routines.
“I don’t think at any point we knew what the other person was saying when we were talking to them,” Wilson said. “In one-on-one interactions, it was more just like gesturing and reading each other’s body language.”
Wilson said the monks, who dressed in orange or yellow garbs and had shaved heads, led “very simple lives.”
They did not have any worldly possessions other than two outfits and their beds.
“That was the biggest difference. I remember looking around the temple and the monastery, and looking around the rooms, and I thought, ‘This is a very simple life, but they’re having so much fun.’ I kind of envied the simplicity of it,” she said.
Wilson said one of her favorite experiences during the trip was playing tag and Fire on the Mountain with the young monks.
“The two youngest monks were really funny, and I got to bond with them a lot because they were climbing all over me,” she said.
Although she was not able to know their names, she said she named them Red and Orange “because one was wearing a red coat and the other was wearing an orange coat,” she said.
She remembered that “Red would just hit people and if he wasn’t like 2 or 3, I’d be like, ‘Oh no, no.’ But it was really funny when Red would hit people because he made a fun game out of that.”
Orange, on the other hand, “was a lot more shy, but he was really funny.”
Lisa Eck, chair of the English Department, who organized and attended the trip along with Rachel Spezia, assistant dean of students, said, “One monk would jump into her arms and another would be hanging on her leg.”
She added although they did not speak the same language, they spoke through the universal language of competition.
During a soccer competition, Eck remembered how Wilson made “the game fun because she would yell out. She would chase the ball with the monks. Overall, she was just extremely enthusiastic.
“The most touching part is that whenever you make a team, every goal was celebrated with high fives. You know, just the fact that you can go from being strangers in the morning to being a team by the end of the day was amazing,” said Eck.
She said Wilson stood out the most to her on the trip because “she threw herself into it with her full body and her facial expressions. She was so excited.”
Wilson said, “Culturally, India stands out the most just because of how far away it is from us and how different the culture is.”
She said, “The food was probably my favorite. I get Indian food here all the time, but it’s not even close. It's still good, but it doesn’t beat going to India and eating. Culturally, that's definitely been the most impactful - just being able to hear a completely different language and eat different food, meet different people.
“We had a lot of vegetarian food, which I appreciate because I just tend to prefer vegetarian food. We had a lot of potatoes, lentils, and dal that was really good. A lot of the desserts are really good, too,” Wilson said.
Eck also remembered while they were at the monastery, she looked over her shoulder and saw Wilson eating lunch with the monks - eight of them all huddled around her.
“Everyone’s got a silver bowl, elbows on the table, but I think she had them, somehow, all laughing at her jokes.”
In June 2023, just five short months after venturing to India, Wilson traveled to Portugal to study at the Universidade Católica Portuguesa (UCP).
With Wilson’s intellect also comes an intense curiosity. She said she wants to explore the corners of the world, leading her to discover parts of herself, information she would not have uncovered without traveling tens of thousands of miles.
This trip was not only academic as Wilson is half-Portuguese, so she wanted to deepen her connection to her heritage and cultural identity. She said her family is from and still lives in northern Portugal. Wilson wanted to travel to deepen her knowledge of the language and be able to use it colloquially.
She said she only had a month in Portugal, and making friends was a bit challenging. She said her study-abroad program was structured in a way that left little room for socializing. She remembers walking around campus, feeling like an outsider, a fleeting shadow among familiar faces. But everything changed one evening when she stumbled upon a group of students also visiting the campus to study abroad.
Wilson said they were from Notre Dame, and as fate would have it, they welcomed her into their circle.
She said she chuckled at the irony that even thousands of miles from home, she forged friendships with a group of students who were from the United States.
Wilson studied in southern Portugal. She explained there is a cultural divide between the north and south, just as there is in the United States.
“I’m from the northern part of Portugal, up near the mountains. The south considers the northerners to be a little more vulgar and a little more out there. Our Portuguese sounds different,” she said. “In my opinion, ours just sounds harsher in the pronunciation.”
While she was taking Portuguese classes at UCP, she said she distinctly remembered a lesson in which she said the word “butt” because, at the time, the class was learning the vocabulary for anatomy.
During the lesson, her professor turned to her and said, “You shouldn’t, you can't say that!”
Wilson was confused because she had a fairly good grasp of the vocabulary for parts of the body. “Why?” she asked.
“Why?” he answered. “Because that’s a swear!” Wilson said she was flabbergasted, not being someone who would use inappropriate language.
She paused before answering. “But that’s what my grandmother taught me,” she told the professor.
Wilson said he smiled and asked, “Yeah? Are you from the north?”
She hesitantly replied, “Yes?” Her professor answered, “Ah, I see. They swear a lot.”
One of the lessons Wilson learned during her time in Lisbon was that some of the language she grew up learning is not socially acceptable - at least not in the south.
“It was really funny because a lot of what I thought were correct words are just swear words - it’s hilarious,” she said.
She said learning about herself from a different perspective was very meaningful to her and deepened the connection she had with her family’s heritage.
“I got to see the stereotypes that I didn’t really know existed,” she said.
The south of Portugal is more reserved and politically correct than the north, where people weave curses into their sentences and talk with more freedom. The north doesn’t hold back, Wilson said.
The people reflect the landscape of their regions. The landscape of the north is treacherous and mountainous - as rugged as its people. The south has flatter landscapes and a Mediterranean climate consisting of hot, dry summers and mild winters. The people are milder as well, according to Wilson.
Wilson said she found the regional differences between the north and south of Portugal very interesting because she spent her childhood visiting her family’s region, but studying in a different region gave her an opportunity to view Portugal in a more nuanced light.
Another part of her journey was visiting her grandmother, who lived just a few hours north, and whom she hadn’t seen in four years.
She said she made the trip one weekend, and the moment she stepped through the door, her cousin’s home felt like a haven, filled with family photos and stories from the past.
“It was two very different vibes,” Wilson said. One vibrant and new, filled with laughter and city lights, and the other warm and familiar, steeped in love and memory. She visited the villages that her grandmother and her family lived in so many years ago, walking the same paths they had.
She said as she reflected on the beauty of these connections, she wove a tapestry of experiences, a vibrant mix of friendships and family ties that would stay with her long after she returned home.
She said she has found that even in a short time, she could create lasting memories and friendships that bridged the distance between two worlds, whether between the north and south of Portugal, Portugal and Massachusetts, or her grandmother’s house and her friend’s dorm.
Wilson found a space to learn about her identity and a way to shrink the size of the world in each place.
Most recently, Wilson spent a summer in British Columbia, Canada, working on a digital humanities internship at the University of Victoria.
This was an experience planned entirely on her own, unlike her last two trips.
Wilson funded her trip through a Fulbright scholarship and the Mitacs Globalink internship program. “I would say that was kind of stressful,” she said, referencing the application process.
The Fulbright grant covered her flights and travel expenses, and then Mitacs Globalink covered the rest.
Through this digital humanities internship, she worked on encoding works of Shakespeare and digitizing them. She worked alongside Kristen Abbott Bennett, professor of digital humanities.
“I started out doing a lot of research for Bennett, and then I started working on encoding and remediating ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost (Folio 1)’ on Oxygen, where I just checked the encoding text to make sure it matches up with the LEMDO and TEI guidelines,” Wilson said.
Bennett said Wilson “really excelled” in Canada and by the time she returned to Framingham, Wilson was teaching her how to use the software.
Bennett said it was no surprise that Wilson was so successful in her internship. She said she had the privilege of having Wilson as a Rams Peer Mentor in some of her classes. Through this experience, she worked with Wilson on a personal and an academic level.
Bennett said, “Sofia is an extraordinary role model for other students.” She added she has seen how Wilson has become “a lot more adventurous” through the trips she has taken over the last four years.
“She is simply an amazing human with a great sense of humor,” Bennett said.
Wilson said the most memorable moment of her summer in Canada was when she participated in events during Pride Week.
She said it was her first Pride celebration, and she felt lucky to be spending it in such an open and safe place in the world.
Growing up in the U.S., Wilson said she had felt the weight of societal pressures and the pervasive undercurrents of homophobia. While it exists everywhere, the atmosphere back home felt particularly tense, making the thought of fully embracing her identity daunting. But Canada promised a different experience, a breath of fresh air, she said.
She said the festivities lasted for an entire week. The highlight, of course, was the grand parade at the end of the week.
Wilson said she experienced a very strong sense of belonging while standing in the streets, as floats glided by, bursting with color and music. Dancers moved rhythmically, their joy contagious.
Wilson said being in Canada during Pride Week felt like stepping into a different world - one where love and acceptance took center stage. She said she realized how important it was to feel safe and embraced for who she is, and this experience filled her with hope. It was a reminder that, while struggles exist, there are also communities where love reigns supreme.
As the summer came to an end, she said she left Canada with more than just memories - she carried with her a renewed sense of self and a deeper understanding of the power of community.
That first Pride was not just an event. “It was a celebration of identity, a testament to resilience, and a beautiful chapter in my journey of self-acceptance,” she said.
Wilson always knew who she wanted to be when she grew up. She had always dreamed of becoming a lawyer and being able to help those in need.
The last two years of traveling have changed that.
Now when she looks out of her dorm window at Framingham State, she sees many possibilities of who she can become.
“It has made me more open to change. I’ve always wanted to go to law school after graduation, but traveling abroad has made me more open to the fact that if that doesn’t happen, it’s OK,” she said.
Wilson said she could see herself working “almost anywhere.”
“I want to go to law school, but if a really, really great opportunity comes up halfway across the world, I’m more likely to take it now,” she said.
Now, Wilson can see herself working in editing or publishing and pursuing poetry and writing on the side. She now even sees herself working at an animal shelter and eventually opening her own shelter with lots of space for the animals that need it.
And none of this has to happen within the United States - something she never would have dreamed about when she first enrolled at Framingham State.
Traveling opened her eyes to an entire world of possibilities, and Wilson said she learned it is OK to divert from what she had planned.
Her only plan now is to ask the question, “Where will I go next?”