The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
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inside michigan athletics Getting To Know Softball Senior Outfielder Nicole Sappingfiel When a school is home to as many students as Michigan (about 28,000 undergraduates), sometimes incoming freshmen are left scrambling to fill class schedules, while others sign up and take all the spots in more coveted areas. When Nicole Sappingfield, a rising senior outfielder on the softball team, received a late registration date, her pickings were rather slim. But, if not for that, her time at Michigan may Sappingfield won the U-M have been wildly different. Instead of taking one of the more common Athletic Academic Achievement English literature classes, Sappingfield selected Award in 2013 and has earned an introductory comparative literature course. two Academic All-Big Ten honors "I needed a class, and comp lit was there," (2012‑13). photo courtesy michigan athletic media relations Sappingfield said. "It was taught by a professor named Catherine Brown. She was a fantastic teacher, and she was very passionate about the course. I just fell in love with it, and I realized that was what I wanted to be doing." Whereas English literature courses study various works written in English, comparative literature works in two languages, and you study works with similar themes and ideas in each language. "I picked English and Spanish," Sappingfield said. "You do a lot of reading across different genres, but you're seeing them through the eyes of two different cultures. You see the different worldviews, experiences and the similarities and contrasts between the two. You learn about the world through literature." Although Sappingfield's first experience with a comparative literature class was positive, there was a fairly big hurdle in front of her, if she wanted to continue in the program: she didn't really speak Spanish. Growing up in Norco, Calif., Sappingfield had taken a handful of Spanish classes in high school, but never more than basic-level learning. "When I came to college, I was not planning to continue learning another language," she said. "When I decided to do comp lit, part of the requirement was 12 credits of upper-level language classes. I started off kind of slow, with the 101 and 102 classes. That summer, I took Spanish 230, which was a class that helped me enormously. I can read and write it pretty well now, and I had