Testimonial by Randi Hendricks

I had a fantastic time at ASPIRANTUM’s Persian summer school. The professors were truly exceptional — deeply knowledgeable, generous with their time, and genuinely invested in helping us engage with the material, and I learned so much from my peers in the class as well. I loved the structure of class everyday where each day we had time focused on reading, listening, and then speaking, which meant we were constantly building on skills from different angles rather than just sitting through lectures. I also benefited from the diversity and applicability of the different themes for each week, such as Political Persian, Historical Persian, Colloquial Persian, and so on — it gave the language real context and made it feel useful beyond the classroom. 

The excursions were another amazing highlight for me this summer in Armenia, offering a chance to see the history and culture we were studying come to life outside of class. My favorite one was seeing the Armenian, Persian, and Arabic manuscripts at the Matenadaran museum, where centuries-old texts connected directly to the languages and cultures we’d spent weeks immersed in. I’m so grateful for this experience and would recommend it to anyone interested in Persian language and culture.