A few days ago I submitted my Fulbright application for the campus committee to review. I was hard pressed for time and still trying to edit, but at 7pm on Wednesday I decided to stop messing around with my essays and just click “SUBMIT.” These past couple of days have felt odd now that I don’t have a major looming deadline. I can’t shake the sense of feeling like I need to be doing something.
(Not so) Luckily, I have another deadline approaching of a different sort. My Fulbright interview, conducted by the campus committee, is on the 23rd. Only ten days away. There is much to be done to prepare. Unfortunately for me, I am notoriously good at screwing up interviews, so I can’t say that I am too excited. However, I am hoping that by thoroughly preparing this one will turn out differently, as it is for a different kind of opportunity.
My preparations will include studying. A lot of studying. I have to refine my knowledge of Colombia because a major part of the interview is grilling the applicant about their chosen host-country and why they want to teach in that country specifically. But beyond this, I also have to be able to explain the feasibility of my chosen project for civic engagement and portray my suitability to be considered an “ambassador” of the US while I am abroad (among other points of consideration). So yeah, I can’t say that I am not nervous. Once this step is finished, the committee will give me some pointers on how I can strengthen my essays and overall application, and lastly I will officially submit everything to Fulbright by the national deadline of October 14th.
On another note, I will have something else to be working on over the next month and a half. Something that I honestly wasn’t expecting to have to be working on at all. In the late spring, I submitted a poster proposal to NAFSA for their upcoming bi-regional conference in Portland, OR. NAFSA is an association of international educators in the US. It consists of university offices for study abroad and international student services, study abroad companies (like CAPA, CIEE, and SIT), international internship providers (like IE3 Global), ESL providers, organizations like PeaceCorps, and maybe even more groups of international educators that I don’t know about. I became a member of NAFSA to further integrate myself into the world of international education as it is the field I would be working in as an English teacher abroad. It also the field that I have the most experience in so far, since I have been working and interning in the study abroad office of my university for the past year.
Anyways. Their bi-regional conference is in November, which is for all of the international educators on the west coast (including Alaska and Hawaii). One of the components of the conference is the “poster session,” where presenters bring projects and such that they want to share with their colleagues in international education. They present in an exhibit hall, with posters, and the others at the conference go around the room observing their work and listening to their presentations. It is essentially like a science fair, but for international education instead of science.
Well, I submitted a poster session proposal for this conference several months ago to present a project of mine that centers on “first time effect” study abroad programs. An example of one of these programs is the Expedition Fellows Program that I helped to lead earlier this year. Programs like this focus on students who have had minimal (if any) international experiences. I can elaborate on my project and overall argument in a later post, possibly closer to the conference when I have done more work on it, but all in all, I recently got an email saying that my proposal had been accepted. Exciting, yes. But also intimidating, since my first participation in a NAFSA conference will be as a presenter. At least this way I get a discount on the registration fee!
Gypsy Feet 