Experience Fulbright

I have to be honest, I was pretty disappointed to learn that I didn’t get selected for the spot in Bhutan.  I told my husband and my letter writers and then tried to just let it go. A few people asked me if I had heard anything and I had to tell them the bad news but mostly no one asked about it.

Then, on a random weekday between classes, my office phone rang.  I answered expecting it to be one of my students concerned about their upcoming final exam. I was shocked to discover it was a person from the Fulbright office.

Wait, what?

That’s right, someone from the Fulbright office was calling me to discuss my application. She wanted to know if I was interested in considering a different country.

A different country?  This was sure unexpected. I think I may have stammered a little before taking a breath and asking her, “Which country?” Of course, if you’ve been following along since the beginning, you already know the answer to this question.

Uzbekistan.

Okay, I’ll admit that I was a little thrown off at first by this. I may have looked something like this…

I really shouldn’t have been surprised by this. After all, the application process did have an area where I could put in other country awards that I would consider if I didn’t get my first choice.  At the time I was filling out my application, I thought, “Why not put down some alternate options?” They put that in the application so I might as well find some other awards to include. The application had space for up to three alternate awards that all fit my qualifications. The first award I put down was Macedonia, because that just sounded like an interesting place to visit. The second one was Barbados, because, well, come on, I live in MN and January gets pretty cold here. The third option I included was, you guessed it, Uzbekistan!

I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but I never really expected to be offered my third alternate so I didn’t put much time into researching the Uzbekistan award during the application process. So when the woman on the phone asked me if I would be interested in Uzbekistan, I really didn’t know anything about it. Still, it was a Fulbright grant and I’m always one to take on a new adventure, so I said, “Absolutely!”

She explained that she would have to forward my application to the Uzbekistan team for review and they would be in touch in a week or two to let me know if I was selected. So, back to that waiting game…

In the meantime, I went straight to the Fulbright directory and searched for scholars who had been in Uzbekistan. I found the person who was there at that time and the person who and just returned and fired off an email to both of them asking if they’d be willing to talk to me about their experience in Uzbekistan.  Of course, they did not disappoint. Both Michael and Beth replied to my email within a day and offered to chat by phone to answer my questions. More than anyone else, these two Fulbright alumni have helped me. I am still in contact with both of them.

Now would be a good time to talk about the Fulbright family. I first heard this phrase when I was talking to my colleague who’d been in Hungary. He told me that he’d be more than happy to talk with me about the application process. He said that now that he was a member of the Fulbright family part of his role was to help other scholars. This sentiment pervades everything associated with the Fulbright program. Every scholar,  staff person, student scholar, really every one I have interacted with has been incredibly welcoming and more than willing to help. It truly does feel like family.

A family that I honored to be a part of now.

A few weeks passed before I received the email with the now familiar attachment. This time the letter stated that I had been offered a Fulbright grant to teach in Uzbekistan and that I would receive the specific grant details in 1-2 weeks.

I was a Fulbright scholar and I was going to Uzbekistan. Now I just needed to figure out what exactly I needed to do to start preparing. One thing I did know was that I was going to need to start learning Russian…