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Fulbright Program: U.S. Applicant Podcast
Transcript For: Alumni Roundtable - Africa
May 20, 2008
Alumni Roundtable - Africa. New York, April 2008. Jermaine Jones, Fulbright Manager for Africa, introduces Fulbright Alumni Toja Okoh, Steven Wood, Robinette Dowtin, Jonathan Noble, Joe Livingston, and Dominic Bocci who relate aspects of their Fulbright experience.
Jermaine: Good early evening everybody, and good
afternoon to the folks in the regional offices. My name is Jermaine Jones and
I’m the Program Manager at the Institute of International Education, or IIE for
short, with the U.S. Student Fulbright Program where I work with the Fulbright
Program for Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, as well as the Middle East and North
Africa and I wanted to thank you all for attending this first alumni roundtable
of this season, the alumni roundtable, obviously, for Africa and the Middle
East. Just a couple of house keeping notes. First, you may have noticed that
there is a laptop in the back of the room here in New York City. In terms of signing up here,
we ask that everyone either now, or maybe after we’ve ended here at 8 o’clock,
provide your name and your email address on that laptop so that we can follow
up with you with additional information or updates that we might have for you
along the way. And, there may be similar signup sheets in the regional offices
as well. Secondly, you may notice a lot of microphones around the room here in New York. I have to
speak into a microphone as well as my colleagues at this table because we’re
actually doing a podcast of this particular event. So it will be placed on the
internet and again accessible via, I guess, this newfangled technology or
whatever. So folks can listen to it at their own leisure, if they’re not able
to attend this, or if you guys want to listen to it after the fact. And you’ll
notice here as well in the New York office there is a microphone set up in the
very middle of the room and we would ask that you all to come to the front,
speak very clearly into the microphone with your questions so that again we can
record you appropriately for the podcast technology.
I’m going to say a few
introductory remarks before jumping into the roundtable. I’ll try to keep my
remarks short so that we can get you guys into the nitty gritty of why you’re
here.
Again, this is for the
U.S. Student Fulbright Program and this is considered to be the U.S.
government’s flagship program for educational and cultural exchange. It was
began in 1946 by Senator Fulbright and by Congressman Hayes to foster mutual
understanding between peoples of the U.S. and other countries. The
Fulbright programs are sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and funded
every year by a U.S.
congressional allotment to State Department and it’s funded in cooperation with
the Fulbright Commissions and Foundations overseas as well as our American
embassies abroad. However it is IIE that administers the student programs here
on the U.S.
side of things. The focus of the program worldwide is cultural exchange.
However, the means for facilitating these exchanges is through academic,
educational, and community based activities. So again, the underlying principle
for the program, for this program, is to, again, promote exchange between
cultures on an individual basis. You could call it microdiplomacy if you want
to. But again, the most important part of—well, let me put it this way: the
most important part of your application is going to be the proposal itself. So
you have to have a strong reason for going abroad in terms of a strong proposal
for academic or artistic research. And finally, an important feature of the
Fulbright program is to provide opportunities for grantees to experience a
country or culture in which they have little to no experience. We have had
grantees in the past apply to countries in which they’ve had a few weeks, or a
few months, or maybe a semester of prior experience. But generally speaking, if
you have, I’d say, in the range of a year or more of experience in the country,
then you’re going to be at somewhat of a disadvantage relative to others who
have less experience but have equally compelling applications.
And just a few more
remarks about the Fulbright Program. Again these are general or world wide
aspects of the program, not specific to Africa or the Middle
East. The U.S. Student Fulbright Program is open to people at a
variety of different levels: recent U.S. college and university
graduates, graduate level students, people in the creative visual and
performing arts, as well as young professionals in various professional fields-
law, public health, medicine, business, education and the like.
You do not need to be
enrolled in a graduate program, or any U.S. college or university at the
time that you apply. It’s certainly possible to submit your application directly
to IIE on an at-large basis. So that’s hopefully something that will dispel one
of the frequent myths of the program. In other words if you were not enrolled
in a U.S.
college or university that does not mean you are not eligible to apply for one
of our grants.
The grants provide
support for one academic year. For Africa,
it’s generally 10 months, but it can in some cases be as few as 6 months. But
again that’s generally an amount of time that’s limited only to people who
either have artistic, creative, and performing arts projects, or for those who
are doing dissertation research projects. For the Middle
East the grants generally run in the range of 9 to 10 months. And
again the grants provide support for that full academic year period and
therefore they’re designed to support self-designed study of some kind, or
research which can include activities such as university coursework, library or
field research, classes in music or an art school, research or work with NGOs
or local government agencies, or a combination of other projects. It’s
basically up to you as the applicant to design how your project will look, so
it’s really something that’s going to be driven by you as the candidate in
terms of deciding what you want to do while you’re overseas.
And the program has
experienced significant growth, over the past several years especially, and for
this past competition, the application deadline for which was October 2007, we
received over 6,700 applications worldwide, which was a record year. And we
expect to offer I’d say in the range of 1500 grants or so for all fields and
disciplines, in over 140 countries around the world.
Now during the course of
the grant term, grantees are expected to be engaged full time in the activities
of their project as laid out in their original project proposals. And, as I mentioned
before, they’re also expected to interact in a variety of ways with their host
community, and that can be done in a variety of ways, such as participating or
helping out with various NGOs or non-profits in their host community, through
sports or arts activities, visits to schools, community organizations, helping
out with American embassies in the host country that might ask you to speak or
give other presentations to the local community. So, there are different ways
of interacting with the host community. But again, that’s a vital part of the
Fulbright experience.
Now let me tailor my
remarks a little bit more to first, Sub-Saharan Africa, and then to the Middle
East and then I’ll let these other folks at the round table speak. Sub-Saharan Africa first. You’ll notice either in the brochure, the
hard copy brochure, copies of which are in the back, as well as on the website,
that there are 26 countries in the Sub-Saharan Africa region to which
candidates of all degree levels can apply. There are a few countries, a
handful, that aren’t listed as being completely off limits altogether, but that
also don’t have country summaries in the brochure. A few of those are Sierra Leone, both Congos,
the former Zaire Congo and Congo Brazzaville, and Rwanda and there are a few others
as well. These are countries to which only advanced level graduates can apply.
Unfortunately, undergraduates, BA level applicants are not allowed to apply to
those countries. The reason being that these are countries that have fairly small
U.S. embassies, and the embassy staff in these countries are so small that they
really don’t have a lot of time to offer support and guidance to people that
aren’t more mature and able to carry out research on a more independent basis
and without a lot of, again, guidance or support from the embassy. So again,
those are the countries to which only advanced level—generally speaking that
means PhD level students are able to apply.
It’s the responsibility
of each candidate or grantee to secure their host or institutional affiliation
for Sub-Saharan Africa. There are many countries outside of the region where
that’s taken care of either by the Embassy or the Commission in the host
country, but that’s not the case for Africa.. In this part of the world of the
world it’s up to you as the candidate or the grantee to work out your own
affiliation with a prospective host institution, college or university, NGO,
research institute, archive, in your prospective host country. And generally
these don’t necessarily need to be confirmed by the time you submit your
application to IIE. Our application deadline is usually around October. This
year it’s going to be October 20 (2007). Two deadlines actually: October the 20th
for the electronic submission of the application. And then October 22nd,
that’s the date by which the hardcopy application must be received here at IIE.
So again, it can really help your chances if the affiliation is confirmed by
those dates, but it’s not a hard and fast rule that it must be by that time.
A few other notes on
Sub-Saharan Africa: Multi-country applications are possible for every country
in the region except for South
Africa. By multi country application I mean,
one application, focusing on one project proposal that would be divided between
2 – 3 different countries in the same world region. Now again it’s possible,
but I have to say that it’s not something that’s necessarily encouraged by the
Program, primarily because it can be very difficult to secure the necessary
clearances and approvals from each country. And if you apply to 2 or 3
countries, and one country says no, that can really jeopardize your chances of
receiving the grant overall. So it’s best to apply to one country, ok? And I
think it’s also very important to keep the language considerations in mind. And
I would stress that even in countries such as Ghana, South Africa, Nigeria,
that might have English as either the official language or one of several
national languages, you shouldn’t automatically assume that you’ll be able to
get by with English alone. It’s really going to be dependent on exactly what
you want to do in the country, where in the country you’re going to be, as well
as who you’ll be working with in the host country that will determine whether or
not English alone will be sufficient, or if you’ll need to know either an
indigenous language, or another language like French or Portuguese or something
along those lines.
And, finally moving on
to my general comments concerning the Middle East and North
Africa. Again, you’ll see in the website as well as the hard copy
brochure that there are 12 countries in the region that accept applications for
the U.S.
student Fulbright program. And again these are applications open to candidates
of all degree levels. Multi country applications are available to every country
in the region except for the following: Egypt,
Israel, Jordan and Morocco. But again, I would just
stress that they are a possibility but they are by no means preferred or
recommended, so just keep that in mind for the reasons that I mentioned
earlier. Candidates interested in receiving additional language training,
primarily in Arabic, should consider applying for one of the critical language
enhancement awards or C.L.E.A. Awards, for short, and again, the complete
details on those particular awards are given in the handbook as well as the
website. And I’d be happy to answer any questions that you might have about
that as well during the course of this session. And I would also just stress
what I mentioned before, during my notes on Africa,
about being careful to think about language considerations. Again, not every
project is doable with English alone so be very certain that you think through
what you want to do during your grant term and also to read through the
language requirements as laid out in each country summary, given again in the
website as well as the hard copy brochure.
I’m going to finish my
comments here and I’m going to introduce our panel. We have panelists here in New York, obviously, as
well as in two of our regional centers. I’m going to introduce them first and
then again ask them to jump right into their presentations. They’ll be
presenting for roughly 5 – 7 minutes on various aspects of their Fulbright
experience, what they found in the host country, as well as how their Fulbright
experience changed their life post Fulbright. And I will introduce them in the
order in which they’ll be presenting. On my left is Toja Okoh. She was a
Fulbrighter to Nigeria
during the 2006-2007 academic year. And on my far right is Steven Wood who had
a Fulbright grant to South
Africa during the same year, 2006-2007. They
are two panelists who will be presenting on the Sub-Saharan Africa side of
things. For the Near East and North Africa we
have four people. First off is Robinette Dowtin who was in Morocco during the 2006-2007
academic year. And again on my immediate right is Jonathan Noble who was in Syria
during 2003-2004. After these four present I’ll ask that we move on to the
alumni in our regional centers. First up is Joe Livingston who was a former
colleague of mine; he worked here at IIE for a few months, but before that he
held a Fulbright grant to Jordan
during the 2002-2003 academic year. And then moving further west, our final
presenter in the San Francisco office is Dominic
Bocci who was in the United
Arab Emirates during 2006-2007. So without
further ado, let’s jump into what our alumni have to say. Let’s start off with
Robinette Dowtin. Robinette? Toja, I’m sorry. Toja, sorry about that. Thank
you.
Toja: Good evening and thank you for
inviting me to be on the roundtable. My name, again, is Toja Okoh and my
Fulbright year was 2006-2007. I participated in the Fulbright program in Nigeria
and I arrived their December, December 1st actually, 2006 and stayed
until August 15, so about 8 months was my time there. My field of study is
African History; I’m a PhD student at New York University.
My project focused on pre-oil Niger Delta and trying to… the project itself
focuses on the ethnicization of politics in the Niger Delta and trying to
explain historically these communities in light of its recent history which is
pretty much dominated by oil politics. My Fulbright grant fits in largely with
my research agenda but also I was really interested in applying to the
Fulbright precisely because of the community connections and networking that I
was also interested in making. I’m one of those rare Fulbrighters that actually
has roots in the country. My father is from that region, but I had spent very,
very little time there as a child and so had an opportunity to go back with
this particular project in mind. So I was really keen on making connections
with the communities that I was going to be researching, which is somehow
connected with my own community but then also I got a chance while I was in
Nigeria to travel to the northern parts of Nigeria which people in the south
don’t often do, and get a very different perspective and be able to talk about
the Niger delta in the north while I was traveling with the U.S. Embassy,
particularly the U.S. Ambassador in Nigeria. So I had a really broad
experience, not just for my research project, but also as a Fulbrighter, and
getting a real, sort of, Fulbright experience with traveling and really talking
and broadening my scope, my interests. So now I have a broader community not
just in the Niger Delta but I think also in the north particularly in Kano, Kaduna, and parts of Abuja and Sokoto.
My career goals and
where this fits in as far as the Fulbright experience- I made connections that
were sort of professional connections but I also made some really, I think,
life connections with people that I will continue to have connections with
throughout my life. Overall I think the most striking part of my experience as
a Fulbrighter was that I… beyond learning about my project and getting a
different perspective on the project itself, I got a different perspective of
myself. And really, sort of… I was actually moved and pushed in ways that I
don’t think I could have been pushed if I hadn’t made the trip, and I hadn’t
spent 8 months in the field, and in some ways I wish I had spent more time
there to really sort of let it sink in. The program and sort of being on the ground
really pushed my own sense of being an American, especially an American with
roots in Africa, and getting a different
perspective about myself and the expectations and assumptions that I carried
with that particular background. I really grew through that experience and it
really reshaped my sense of being and belonging not just as an American but
also sort of as a world citizen. I didn’t expect that from the Fulbright, and
that was something that really shifted my perspective. In many ways I came to
sort of a different understanding of the project itself; it became a bigger
project than just a research project. It has now become something that I think
I will engage in in various other aspects, not just as an academic which I will
become but also I would like to be an advocate for the Niger Delta communities
in the future and as I develop my academic career. So I think I’ll end it there
and talk later.
Steve: Good evening, my name is Steve
Wood. I was a Fulbrighter in South
Africa for 2006-2007 and my field of study
was sociology. I guess I was one of the few students that was currently in
school and I applied as at-large. So I was one of the people that was still in
school but was able to get a Fulbright as an at-large candidate. The reason I
applied for a Fulbright was I needed money to fund my dissertation research in South Africa.
I was looking at prison reform and more specifically organizations that provide
prison oversight in post-Apartheid prisons, and ultimately comes down to human
rights issues: are prisoners being treated properly? Does the public have
access to information about what’s going on inside their prisons? Are the
prison officials being held accountable when they start to mistreat prisoners?
So I was looking at the judicial inspected prisons, which provides an oversight
of prisons and that was the focus of my dissertation. And hopefully tomorrow if
everything goes right I will have my PhD, officially.
Luckily with the
Fulbright I was able to go all across the country. I visited all nine
provinces. I was up towards the Mozambique
area, Zimbabwe;
I was in the former homelands; I was in the big cities; I was in the small
towns; I was in the informal settlements, townships, you name it. And if it
hadn’t been for the Fulbright, I don’t think I would have ever had that
opportunity. So I was lucky in that way.
In terms of some of the
challenges that I confronted, I think, especially in South Africa, you need a car and
cars are very expensive there. And, it’s not safe to walk around, like it is
here in New York City.
And I made the financial decision not to get the car. So for me that was a big
challenge especially when it came down to looking for places to live and
getting around. So, in terms of challenges, I think that was one of the biggest
challenges I faced while I was there.
In terms of some of my
more memorable experiences, just getting to meet so many different people, and
getting to talk to ordinary South Africans about the United States, about the education
system. So many South Africans thought I would be able to help them get into
school here in the states—I don’t know how the other Fulbright Scholars fared
in that way—or they thought I could help them get work in the states. But,
other than that, it was a great experience to be able to be able to interact
with so many different people. And, something that Jermaine pointed out, even
though in South Africa, English is one of the 11 official languages, what I
found was that even people who spoke basic English, it was sometimes very
difficult to have anything more than a very basic conversation with them. And I
only spoke English. I didn’t learn Zulu, I didn’t learn Xhosa, I didn’t learn
Swati or Afrikaans. I stuck with English and I was basically able to get by
with that but I did find it to be quite a bit of a challenge every now and
then.
I don’t know… is there
anything else that I’m… I think I’m done.
Robinette: Good day everyone. My name is Robinette
Dowtin and I was a participant in Morocco in the 2006-2007 academic
year. My project was looking at the intersection between Islam and women’s
dress. So basically I was going around different regions of the country, the
highways, the byways, the big cities, the small cities, the no cities
interviewing women of various cultural backgrounds about representations of
women in the public space. I wanted to know how that fared with religion,
tradition, practicality of dress, fashion. Was it a mixture of these things or
was it none of these things? So basically I spent my Fulbright term doing that
but I was a beneficiary of what we called then the Language Training
Initiative. I forget what you all changed the name to. Basically what I did was
three months prior to beginning my Fulbright period I studied Arabic, both
types of Arabic. I went into Morocco
with French as a second language, but I studied modern standard Arabic for 3
months, for three and a half hours a day Monday through Friday, and then I took
private lessons on Saturdays and Sundays dealing with Islam, dealing with Morocco,
dealing with women. And then for an hour and a half to two hours every evening Monday
through Friday I studied Darija which is the colloquial language of Morocco,
and I actually lived with a Moroccan family for the entire time I was there
which stemmed from a 2004 SIT program in which I spent approximately 8 weeks
studying Arabic and Moroccan culture in Morocco. And so I was very blessed to
be able to benefit from that Language Training Initiative because when it was
time for me to actually begin my fieldwork, I conducted all the interviews on
my own, having gone in there not knowing very much, forgotten all of my Arabic.
I was able to accomplish my goal independent of a translator which really
helped facilitate the interviews much better than had I had a translator with
me. So I would definitely encourage taking advantage of that, of the language
initiative.
I guess I would say as
far as my future goes or is concerned, I applied for both the Fulbright and
graduate school at the same time with the intention of deferring admission and
I found out about both at the same time, within the same hour, and that was a
very good thing, a very good.day. So I actually was accepted to go to graduate
school; I also go to NYU like Toja but I’m a first year student. So I was
planning on looking at West Africa, looking at the jihads, looking at 18th,
19th century and once I got to Morocco and really delved into my
project I decided to change my entire area of study and that’s what I did. I
was approved by the department. So, Morocco and Fulbright definitely
played a critical role and what I’m choosing to do with my future.
As far as a memorable
moment I think I’ll take it on a personal level because Morocco has held a very
special place in my heart for quite some time and I don’t want to romanticize
it at all, but I definitely feel and I really believe it’s a part of having
spent time with the family there and really kind of acclimating myself to a
certain culture. I was definitely taking a step that I’d never taken before.
I’d never lived with a family, I’d never been by myself in that sense, this
young African American Christian woman in this predominantly Muslim, Arabic
speaking community in which I felt completely alone in the beginning but I just
really didn’t by the end. I’d had a day which was just a rough day. I’d lost a
very valuable piece of merchandise that I’d purchased 2 days prior, I was
called a really bad racial slur, I found out someone was fraudulently using my
bank account, had taken almost all of my money. That was a very bad day for me.
But I decided not to tell my Moroccan family because they were really over the
top about their students, they wanted to really make sure we were taken care
of. But I believe one of my sisters must have leaked the information to my
father and he came into our room and he was crying. He’s rather sickly,
himself, but he was crying so much. And I was like, you know, “baba what’s
wrong with you?” And he was crying because he said, you know, “I’m hurting
because you’re hurting. And you are my child. God might have given you to me
through another set of parents, but you are the child that god meant for me to
have and so your pain is my pain.” And so at that moment I realized this is
definitely not about race, color, or creed. I definitely felt without a doubt a
member of my family. So I would definitely encourage Fulbright to be a part of
your experience as well.
Jonathan Hi, my name is Jonathan Noble. I was
a Fulbrighter to Syria
in 2003-2004 and I wanted to talk a little bit today about my project but also
professional career path opportunities after Fulbright, particularly for folks
who may not be looking at a career in academia. I went to Syria with two purposes. One was to
improve my Arabic, and I worked on that through a number of avenues. One was
through studying at the University
of Damascus. I also had
private lessons during the entirety of my stay. The other was to do some
research and I did end up doing work on heritage tours and projects in Syria
and how they were being used as a development tool in different parts of the
country.
I think what I want to
talk a little bit about today is what Fulbright prepares you for in your
career, or in a career once you’re done. I think particularly Syria was an excellent opportunity.
I finished my bachelors degree and then went immediately after summer to Syria
and I was really unsure about whether I wanted to have a career in academia or perhaps
go on and work in the public sector or do something like that. And it was a
great time and opportunity, a chance for me to figure out what I wanted to do,
and particularly to have a regional focus and find out through that where I was
perhaps best placed. I work for IIE in Houston
now on exchange programs with countries in the Middle East.
I think that my experience there has really prepared me for a career in the
public sector in a way that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. I was able to meet
with people from all walks of life, whether they were officials, my neighbors
in the community that I lived in and interact in the region, in Syria and Damascus
with people on a daily basis. And that prepared me for experiences I had
afterwards. I stayed in the region for two years and worked for an NGO there
and then came back to the United
States, and I didn’t get a masters degree,
but left after I was done. And I think meeting people, being immersed, taking
some of the theoretical knowledge I had learned while I was a student getting
my bachelors degree and applying it to an experience in country and in the
region was really invaluable. And I think one of the things people should think
of is I think Fulbright is an opportunity not only to further your academic
career but also for you to look into opportunities and chances that may come
professionally later.
I also wanted to touch
on some of the memorable experiences I had. Syria at the time was a pretty
small program. I think there are more students that are studying there now than
when I was there in 2003-2004 but I became really close with a number of the
other Fulbrighters that were there and I think it was really important for me
to have, to be part of a community of scholars and likeminded Americans who had
a goal of working as ambassadors, working to learn more about Syria, and to sort
of act as… to be people who could talk about American politics in a way that
wasn’t part of official policy. And to just be American citizens and learning
about another place, to have that community and to be able to talk... We had
Thanksgiving dinner together and did a number of things together that were
really good opportunities for us to get to know each other and to kind of miss
home a little bit less. I think that was one of the most memorable experiences
that I had being on Fulbright and I would encourage anybody who wanted to apply
for it to do so. I think it’s a great program.
Jermaine: Can we move on to the Washington, D.C.
office and have Joseph Livingston speak?
Joe: Good evening everyone.
Jermaine can you hear me ok?
Jermaine: Yes, I can Joe.
Joe: Great. Well, first, thanks for
having me. It’s always great to be back at IIE for an evening. It was a year
ago, I think, that we were all doing these panels together, so it seems like
kind of a return. I guess I wanted to talk a little bit about my project and
then provide a bit of information on some of the differences of what I experienced
when I actually arrived in the country versus what I expected. And then I’ll
move on a little bit to the career relevance, and there are certainly a number
of questions in DC about language prior to when we started and so I thdefinitely
want to touch on that as well, if I get the chance.
So, basically my
project, which now seems like ancient history since 2002-2003, I began right
after graduating from college. And what I was looking at was social class
structure of Palestinian and refugee society in Jordan. And more specifically I was
trying to look at how social structure is set up in historical British mandate
Palestine- look at the class structure there and how that might have juxtaposed
itself onto Palestinian society in Jordan. So I looked a lot at migration
patterns, which families moved where, how people set up their lives, whether it
was in Amman or
small villages or refugee camps, what determined those factors. I did this
through extensive qualitative interviews. I had a survey set up that was very
open ended so I basically worked with NGOs, with professors, with some
representatives from some NY UN organizations, think tanks, etc. and found ways
of getting in touch with Palestinians, living in camps, living in affluent
parts of Amman, living in East Amman in less affluent sections of the city and
basically would sit with families for several hours at a time, and kind of use
that as a means of finding out everything I could about their lives: where they
come from, what they’ve learned, about their family. When I started it was
really more about linking it back to Palestine,
rather than trying to understand ??? and the whole transition better. When I finished I was
really much more interested in how economic indicators, people’s professions,
their level of education, their income, how all these things impacted people’s
attitudes towards returning to Palestine in the prospect of some future peace
process or final status negotiation. So you definitely go through a lot of
transition during that whole process. I was fascinated for about a month with
migration patterns and movements and how those choices were made and I was kind
of thinking about that more broadly. So, I think that’s sort of a good segue
into the open-endedness and the flexibility of the Fulbright award.
When you first find out
about this it may appear as a very rigid, academic type of award. And there is
definitely an academic component. And certainly the project is a means to
receiving the Fulbright award and having this wonderful broad experience. But
once you’re in country, and I’ll be frank, the level of supervision over what
you’re doing on a day to day basis, in many places—and of course each country
is going to be a bit different and you’re going to want to speak to your program
manager about those nuances—but in many cases you really have a tremendous
amount of freedom as to where to take your Fulbright and how to conduct your
life on a day to day basis. So, many Fulbrighters that I’ve seen in Jordan and in
other countries have found opportunities to volunteer, sometimes through unpaid
internships, certainly to travel around the country where they’re being hosted
and that’s just one aspect. From the research perspective, from the academic
perspective, people really do go in very different directions. I mean, to go in
with a history project and then change to an art project, or something like
that, is a serious change you’d have to consult on that, but minor changes and
fluctuations in how you do your research, who you meet with and what you’re
really trying to accomplish, those are things that are easily done, again, in
my experience. So I would go in with the attitude that while this is in theory
an academic grant, the heart of the Fulbright experience is the intercultural awareness,
the intercultural experience, the opportunity to meet people, to understand
their way of life, to try to understand the similarities of the host culture
that you’re interacting with, to learn about them, to allow them to learn about
you, to leave them with an experience of, with knowledge of what American’s are
about because really we’re all serving as ambassadors over there teaching
people about our ways of life and we’re not doing it from the government
perspective, cause when we’re out there we’re the common people from the U.S.,
we’re the average man, and we’re not connected to government. It gives us some
distance and allows us to talk to people about politics, about history, about
life, about music, about society and people
will really be very grateful for the opportunity. And I can tell you
that when you come back to the states people will be incredibly thankful for
the opportunity to hear about the people’s lives that you’ve discovered.
Because you know, if you’re from Kansas
or a small town in upstate New York
as I was, people really don’t know anything about some small village in Jordan. So take
the opportunity to really get off the beaten track.
One thing I’d say is a
challenge for Americans in many cases especially in countries with big
Fulbright programs, especially countries with big ex-pat populations, is the
bounds between how much time you’re going to spend with other Americans and
other ex-pats versus how much time you’re going to spend with the local
population and there’s no right answer to this except to say that you’re on a
Fulbright so as much as you feel comfortable I would try to take advantage of
those opportunities and for the sake of language, for the sake of interaction,
for the sake of getting as much out of that limited experience as possible I
think that helps make it worthwhile. But, you know, that’s not to say to cut
your ties with your fellow Fulbrighters; that’s unrealistic. There’s a reason
people feel the need at times to be around other people who are more like them
in certain cultural ways.
Last thing I want to say
is- career relevance. I think Jonathan did a good job of really explaining
this. There is a trajectory that Fulbright can put you on professionally, it
certainly doesn’t need to be academic; it is for many people. It can help you
when you’re going through graduate school applications and the research
experience alone… certainly you can use that very research for grad school
thesis or a PhD. It will certainly help to facilitate that level of research in
the future. Outside of academia there really are many types of jobs that are
well served by the Fulbright experience from working at NGOs to working for the
government. A lot of people who have a lot of academic knowledge about the
subject simply don’t have the on the ground experience, and that can translate
to not having linguistic experience, but it can also mean that they simply
don’t really get what’s going on in these countries and I can say that I’ve now
lived in Jordan for two and a half to three years and the Arab world is an
extremely complicated place. And so I think that experience really goes a long
way towards beginning to understand these nuances. I currently am in the
Foreign Service. I joined after leaving IIE and I’m preparing for my first
assignment to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. So far me, the
Fulbright experience very much fits on a continuum to where I am now.
Jermaine: Alright, thank you so much Joe. That
was fantastic. That was really good. Can we move on to San Francisco now and Dominic Bocci?
Dominic: Is this working?
Jermaine: We can hear you.
Dominic: OK, wonderful. So I am Dominic Bocci
and I was in the Fulbright year 2006-2007. I applied to the United Arab Emirates
and I was housed out of Dubai
and I did Islamic Studies. And actually, as opposed to a lot of the people that
just presented, I didn’t really know what I was going to do with my life. So
after college I was working abroad in Egypt and I decided that I needed
some more time to figure out what my research interests were. So I applied to
the Fulbright in order to spend more time in the country, get more language
skills, really narrow down what I wanted to study. At the time I was working
with Islamic law and court systems, specifically in Egypt and I wanted to expand that
over to the Gulf. Originally I thought I wanted to study in Saudi Arabia,
but that wasn’t available so I figured Dubai
was pretty great. So that’s the way I went.
So I ended up doing an
independent research project working on Islamic custody law in the courts of
the U.A.E. and how federal courts differed from local courts, both the Islamic
courts and other courts that they had. So I was living in Dubai and I was also living in Sharjah, the
emirate next door, so they’re about 15 minutes apart. And my institution I
selected was the American
University of Sharjah and
I actually set that up through my alma
matter which was UC Berkeley. So, to a lot of you who are applying you should
basically go back to your undergrad institution if you’re not already there and
start talking to a lot of people about who they might know or who they can set
you up with to talk about the country that you’re in. I’m going to specifically
talk about what I wish I knew regarding the Fulbright before I left, or what I
wish I knew when dealing with my research now having come full circle and
knowing what my project was going to ultimately be and what my experience was
going to be like. I think it’s really important to understand that you could
really, quite frankly, end up all alone in the country that you go to and so
you’ve really got to be excited about your project and you really have to take
full advantage of what you’re gong to do. I happened to have… there were other
Fulbrighters in the U.A.E. but we didn’t really work together at all. And so,
when I first arrived, I just automatically assumed that someone was going to
come pick me up from the airport and that everything was going to be great, but
I foolishly didn’t arrange that myself. I just kind of thought it would happen.
That’s something you’re going to learn is going to be a massive problem on your
Fulbright. Things don’t just happen without you doing them; it’s kind of a
revelation you’ll end up learning. So anyways, all the connections you end up
making you’re pretty much going to forge for yourself. So you’re going to have
to network and be really, really industrious and get a lot of stuff done. Also,
I can’t speak for the rest of Africa, but I
just want everyone to know… living in the Middle East
is kind of difficult especially if you’ve never done it before. So there are a
lot of great things about the Fulbright, in fact, I couldn’t even imagine not
doing it. But, I mean, take a really realistic look. I mean, if you haven’t
lived abroad, flexibility is going to be the key thing that you’re going to
really need to hone. This is not even bus schedules, we’re talking you may need
to rework a whole aspect of your research proposal because you didn’t quite
realize that it was a sensitive issue at the time to ask 500 Muslim women about
their divorces, which is a problem that I kind of got into. Not easily of
course. I ended up working through the university and everyone was incredibly
helpful. Because I basically went with the assumption that I just wanted to
learn as much as possible about the U.A.E. and try and really understand what
the courts were doing. And I think your genuine interest will ultimately shine
through and people will be more than willing to help you. The only other thing
is that , to those of you who are applying at large, don’t be afraid. I
actually did it from Egypt,
and doing it fro abroad is pretty difficult considering that a lot of the
countries you’ll go to… well, I guess it doesn’t matter whether you’re broad or
not. A lot of the institutions you want to work with may not have email
addresses and even when they do they probably don’t check them very often. And
so you really want to make sure that you kind of know where your project is
going and who you want to work with and how realistic it actually is. But, basically,
if I say one thing today, for those of you that are applying at large, you
should really probably persuade a friend to also apply with you because you’re
going to need someone to go over your stuff and really analytically look at
what you’re doing, because if you do it by yourself, you’re going to get really
lost. So, it’s a great experience, I really liked it. It fit perfectly into my
career goals. I’m applying to PhD programs now, and I’m ultimately using the
research that I did, working with the courts in my PhD program and it’s really
great. I wouldn’t have exchanged it for the world.
I hope that was good!
Here you go.
Jermaine: It was very good Dominic, thank you.
Thank you all actually. Thank you very much.
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