Rashida Thomas became a freshwoman at Trinity in Washington D.C. as of September 2004. As a double major in History and International Affairs as well as a minor in Spanish, she is very interested in our global world.

Rashida's interest in language and the global community developed at different stages in her life. As a native of The Bronx in New York City, New York she was exposed at a young age to peoples of varied cultures. Her earliest encounters with Spanish and other languages such as Swahili began when she was merely four years old and in a private preschool. Although her interest initially waned in elementary school, when she reached the sixth grade it re-emerged.

As a sixth grader, Rashida greatly enjoyed her required weekly Spanish class. Then, she became deeply upset to discover she would be unable to continue her formal Spanish education until eighth grade because there would be no classes taught during her seventh grade year. At school and in her neighborhood, however, Rashida had acquired friends of different Latino origins. Thus it was with her Mexican, Guatemalan, Puerto Rican, Dominican, and Cuban friends that she practiced and explored the Spanish language as well as Latino culture during the gap in her education.

Upon entry into her alma mater, The Bronx High School of Science, she was overjoyed to learn that she would have to take four years of language. Her enthusiasm was curbed when she found that the school wanted to place her in introductory Spanish due to the inconsistency in her formal exposure to the language during junior high school. She searched for a way around this barrier and discovered that the only way around it was to have a one-on-one interview - in Spanish - with the head of the language department. Based upon that interview she was placed into intermediate Spanish as a ninth grader.

Rashida would go on to exhaust her resources in the Spanish division of the foreign language department and culminated her language education as a junior with advanced Spanish, the final lingual endeavor she would have in high school.

Though Rashida's interest in language was cultivated early, it was not until high school that she was formally introduced to international affairs. During the summer between her junior and senior years she partook in the International Affairs Summer Enrichment Program at Howard University. It was there that she was charged with the task of creating a United Nations resolution statement on the Iraqi Conflict from the perspective of a member of the U.N. Security Council. Her designated nation was Russia. In order to fully grasp the feelings and ideals of Russia, she and the other program participants were immersed in Russian culture. This immersion included visits to the embassy and study in Russian history, as well as introduction to the Russian language. At the culmination of the program, participants presented their resolutions to a mock meeting of the Security Council. For this event, Rashida was designated Secretary General. Based upon the experiences garnered through the program, Rashida' postgraduate occupational plans include a diplomatic position for the United States State Department.