SHE is a world-famous pop star, having topped the charts in the US, UK, France, Spain and Australia, sold millions of albums and sung duets with the likes of Beyonce.
But the Colombian singer-songwriter Shakira - known for hits like Hips Don't Lie and Beautiful Liar - has been turning up incognito for an ancient history class in the University of California at Los Angeles.
The half-Lebanese singer, who is popular in her home country for her fusion of Arab melodies with Latin music, enrolled for a course called Introduction to Western Civilisation: Ancient Civilisations from Prehistory to Circa AD 843, not long after completing her Oral Fixation worldwide tour.
She attracted the attention of the lecturer Robert Cleve, a professor of ancient history, not for her celebrity status, of which he was ignorant, but for her intelligence.
"I was really impressed with how intelligent she was," he said. "She told me she was visiting from Colombia and that she was just doing this for her own enlightenment and enjoyment."
Shakira, 30, whose full name is Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll, attended the course like any other student, and would often discuss the course material with Professor Cleve after the class had finished.
"She looked like just an ordinary student. She wasn't flamboyant ... she didn't act like a big celebrity or anything," he said.
Shakira has managed to combine her mega-stardom with a "girl next door" attitude.
"Believe it or not, I'm a very shy person," she said at a recent interview. "The stage is the only place where I feel uninhibited. The audience becomes like a huge mirror in which I look at my feelings reflected and they respond to me.
"We become like one. That's the magic of a good performance."
Shakira, who has an IQ of 140, has always alternated her musical career with study.
She left education for a while to release her first album at 14, but later returned to get her high school diploma.
Her manager, Fifi Kurzman, said Shakira often took tutorials on the history and languages of the countries she visits. She confirmed that the star had taken the ancient history course: "She went when she finished her tour, for the summer."
Shakira has also developed what might seem like an unlikely friendship with Colombia's other cultural icon, the Nobel Prize winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Garcia Marquez, author of classics like A Hundred Years of Solitude and News of a Kidnapping, is from Colombia's Caribbean coast like Shakira, who was born in the city of Barranquilla.
The two teamed up last year to set up a foundation to fight child poverty with other Latin stars like Ricky Martin, Spaniard Miguel Bose and fellow Colombian musician, Juanes.
Garcia Marquez attended one of Shakira's concerts in Mexico where he spends most of his time and maintains his primary home.
"It was a great honour having him come," she said.
Her father was of Arab extraction and her career in music began when, at the age of four, she wrote poetry that she would later put to music.
She was also four when she made her "stage debut" at an Arab restaurant, where musicians were playing the doumbek, a traditional drum that typically accompanies belly-dancing. Shakira ended up dancing on the table, to the surprise of her father and to riotous applause from the other diners. The performing arts beckoned.
At 13, she was signed up by Sony and at 14 released her first album Magia (Magic).
Up until 2001, her albums were all in Spanish, but she made the cross over into English with Laundry Service which sold more than 15 million copies.
Her future projects include working with Garcia Marquez as she is providing three songs for the soundtrack of the film adaptation of his classic novel Love in the Time of Cholera due for release later this year.
