My interest in Spanish began in high school, but it was living in the Dominican Republic for a year and a half as a religious missionary that led me to fluency. After returning home, I wanted to refine my language skills in a more academic setting, which led me to pursue a minor in Spanish focused on writing, Latin American culture, and sociolinguistics. This project grew out of that experience and explores how adult Spanish learners in the United States use code-switching in conversation. While much of the existing research centers on native Spanish speakers, I was interested in contributing a new perspective by studying native English speakers who learned Spanish later in life. As part of my research, I conducted and recorded interviews in Spanish with four participants, analyzing when and why they shifted between Spanish and English in natural conversation. Through this process, I found that code-switching was not random, but instead functioned primarily as a strategy to navigate vocabulary gaps rather than grammatical uncertainty.  I then used this research to write a robust research paper and create an accompanying academic poster.