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Fulbright Program for U.S. Students

Fulbright Foreign Student
Newsletter

Issue 12 | December 2008

Reflections on the Fulbright Experience - Recent Alumni Perspectives
table of contents

Returning Home As A Different Person

by Sarp Centel, 2007-2008, Turkey

“Traveling is to go back home a different person."  These are the words that come to mind as my time in the United States as a Fulbright grantee is ending.  I feel that I will indeed go back a different person, as I embark on a new journey in Turkey.  I came to the United States with openness, a willingness to learn, and a desire to share and change.  Looking back, I have definitely not been disappointed!  The diversity of people around me has had a great impact on my interests.  They have encouraged me to explore and try new things I hadn't done before.  I’ve started taking salsa classes, sailing on weekends, attending programs and tasting food from countries I didn’t know existed!  It was fascinating to get a feel for the whole world in one place.

Sarp Centel, 2008-2009, Turkey 
Sarp Centel, 2007-2008, Turkey
 
Spending most of my time on campus, I was limited to a certain perspective of Americans.  I was able to interact with a lot of professionals during Fulbright’s International Science and Technology Award Enrichment Seminar in San Jose, California, as well as during my summer internship at Adobe.  I got a taste of the start-up culture in Silicon Valley by attending unconventional events in the Bay Area.  The people I met were enthusiastic and full of energy, their passion for technology and innovation, fascinating.

Life is full of choices, and every choice is a renunciation of another.  One of the best choices I made was to meet with a host family through the AMIS Amigo Program, a non-profit organization in Atlanta.  They invited me to dinner on Thanksgiving, featuring delicious, home-cooked southern food.  At first, they were timid when they asked me, “What does the rest of the world think about us?”  As we got to know each other, we found more similarities than differences.  It’s inspiring when people you don’t know take you into their homes and share their feelings and opinions with you.

One thing I’ve learned to embrace was constraints.  Having a limited amount of time in the United States encouraged me to make good use of holidays.  I traveled and experienced different parts of the United States so as to obtain a better understanding of its culture.  I find it amusing that I’ve probably traveled to more cities than most Americans around the United States: New York, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles, San Diego, Las Vegas, New Orleans, Seattle, Washington D.C. and Philadelphia.  If I could recommend places to go, it wouldn't be the most famous ones.  It would be the dinner table of an American family, a fraternity house on campus during Halloween, or an obscure hippie shop in San Francisco.  

Paul Graham, my favorite essayist, argues that each city sends you a message.  According to Graham, New York tells you to make more money, Boston conveys that you should be smarter, and San Francisco tells you to live better.  Have you ever thought about the message your city sends?



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Translating Experiences: An Unknown Indian in New York

by Debashree Dattaray, 2007-2008, India

My sojourn as a Fulbrighter from India in 2007-2008 at the State University of New York, Stony Brook offered diverse ramifications: some serious, some mirthful and some truly part and parcel of developing mutual understanding between cultures - as the Fulbright motto goes. 

Thanksgiving with my American host family; singing Christmas carols door-to-door; friendships with Fulbrighters from all over the world; sharing tips on Turkish coffee; Russian borscht and Bengali chicken curry together were some of the experiences which came hand-in-hand with participating in workshops at the Native American Museums in Washington, DC and New York, attending the Native American Symposium in Durant, Oklahoma, and visiting an American public school classroom during the Fulbright Enrichment Seminar in San Antonio, Texas.

Debashree Dattaray, 2007-2008, India 
Debashree Dattaray, 2007-2008, India (third from right) with her classmates from Professor Harvey's class  
As I walk down memory lane from my hometown in Kolkata, my thoughts center on an experience that I particularly enjoyed as a Fulbrighter.  At the Department of Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies at Stony Brook, I spent some time auditing a class on the "Ethics of Translation’" taught by Professor Robert Harvey during the spring semester.  The course caught my interest because coming from India, translation is a part of our daily existence, given our multilingual background.  Also, I was keen to become part of an educational system that was, until then, alien to me.  Being the only woman of color in a class of a dozen or more young adults, dealing with translation in relation to cultural studies and the paradigms of literature, seemed a daunting and challenging task before I embarked on the project.  What originally seemed like a unique position of marginality turned out to be an empowering one, thanks to the understanding meted out by Professor Harvey and my classmates. 

Hence, to be a part of a multilingual situation outside the home country, and to take part in active and animated discussions on canonical, avant-garde, Euro-American texts, turned out to be incredibly enriching.  The excitement of actually attending a university class from what was to my staid, Indian brain a bizarre and unearthly 7:00 PM to 10:00 pm, was in fact, an extremely rejuvenating experience.  The students from Professor Harvey’s class - from different academic backgrounds, such as English, Philosophy, Cultural Studies, Comparative Literature - intrigued me with their sensitive readings of texts from what I had previously perceived to be ‘peripheral readings.'  They were willing to listen to the voice of the marginalized. 

A cheese and wine party at Professor Harvey’s home on the last day of class was yet another fun-filled experience during an intriguing course.  I was touched by the hospitality offered by Professor Harvey and his wife, as well as the kindness of my American classmates, who offered me rides to and from the party.  The course helped me to be part of the American university system and was certainly a cornerstone for building a fruitful Fulbright journey.



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Submitting Photos, Articles and Blogs to State Alumni


Share your photos with the Fulbright Community!
  • Step 1: Register for State Alumni at https://alumni.state.gov/register or http://exchanges.state.gov/.
  • Step 2: Once your account has been verified, login to State Alumni and navigate to the Fulbright Community from your community menu on the home page, or go directly to https://alumni.state.gov/fulbright.
  • Step 3:  Click on "Multimedia Gallery" to view existing photo albums, podcasts and videos. 
  • Step 4: To add your own photo album, click on 'Create a New Album' on the right hand side of the multimedia gallery page.
  • Step 5: Create your album by adding a title and description.  Please be specific.  Adding your name, home country, Fulbright country, field of study and year will help others to easily identify you and your photos.  Click "Save."
  • Step 6: Click "Add Photos" to begin adding photos to your album.  Photos may be added one at a time (Single File) or as a group (Zip Archive allows uploads of .zip, .gzip, and tar files). 
  • Step 7: For each photo or group of photos, enter appropriate titles, captions, keyword tags and a location. 
  • Step 8: Edit your album or the individual photos in your album if necessary.
  • Step 9: The Fulbright Community Manager will be alerted of your new album and/or blog and will approve materials before they appear live on the site.  Until they are approved, photos and blogs will display a "pending" status.
  • Step 10: Enjoy the Fulbright Community galleries and articles!

    Note: In addition to adding photos to the Fulbright Community Multimedia Gallery, you may also upload photos to the general Photo Gallery for all State Alumni members or to your user profile.  If you have a podcast or video to share, please email it to webmaster@alumni.state.gov. 

Tell the Fulbright Community about what you're writing!

  • Step 1: Register for State Alumni at https://alumni.state.gov/register or http://exchanges.state.gov/.
  • Step 2: Once your account has been verified, login to State Alumni and navigate to the Fulbright Community from your community menu on the home page, or go directly to https://alumni.state.gov/fulbright.
  • Step 3: Navigate to "Resources" and select "Fulbright Library" from the menu.
  • Step 4: Choose the appropriate section, such as blogs, research papers or multimedia.  Click "New Topic" to add a new item, or reply to an existing post. 
  • Step 5: Write the name of your blog (or other writing), add a descriptive message, and upload any relevant files.  Click "Save." 
  • Step 6: Subscribe to any or all of the Fulbright Library sections to receive an email when new items are posted.


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A Call for Articles with Photos


We welcome articles with accompanying photos for future issues of the Fulbright Foreign Student Newsletter. Articles should ideally be about your experience of being abroad as a Fulbright grantee (and cultural ambassador), and any relevant and/or unique musings you might want to share with your fellow Fulbright grantees and others interested in the Fulbright Program. The length of the article should be no more than 500 words and not require much editing in order to be published. The accompanying photos should show you engaged in program activities, or be illustrative of your article's content. Please submit your articles with photos within two weeks of the release of this newsletter. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us. We look forward to receiving your articles!

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