Fellow Stories
True gap year stories from Fellows abroad!
Check out the latest blogs from Global Citizen Year Fellows in Brazil, Ecuador, and India!
Category
Class Year
Country
Selfishness Vs. Selflessness
Chloe Bobar
2010-09-29
My mind serves as an arena for the constant conflict between selfishness and selflessness. I want to believe that my actions are inspired by the latter of these forces, but as I sit here trying to answer the question, “What do I want to achieve out of my Global Citizen Year?” I cannot help but feel as though many of...
Read MoreThis Is Just the Beginning
Jake Filderman
2010-09-28
When will it finally sink in that I really am about to go on the adventure of a lifetime? Surely the GCY training sessions should have hammered that fact into my head by now. Through all this learning how to resolve conflict, speaking with members of congress, and acquiring blogging skills, a simple fact has...
Read MoreBridges
Joe Giallo
2010-09-28
One day, probably about a week ago, we were doing an activity where we had to speculate and journal about our identities. It was an exercise in self-examination, and how identities affect the stories we tell. I was ranting, as is my habit in private journal entries, but that’s not really important. What is important...
Read MoreBlood, Sweeet, and Tears
Joe Giallo
2010-09-28
Allow me to introduce you to Sweeet. That’s his street name. You might also know him by Sterling, his handle for the Street Sheet newspaper, or Christophe (that’s phonetic, never saw his name in print), his given name. I met Sweeet on the streets of San Francisco, working on a project for GCY. What was...
Read MoreA Brief Historette
Michaela Kobsa Mark
2010-09-28
Michaela means ‘Walk with the Lord’, but for now I prefer to walk alone and keep an open mind. Grace was suggested by my grandmother-by handing me a virtue she hoped it would transcend into my nature. These names are my own, but they’re also young- just eighteen years old with little knowledge of their...
Read MoreLenses
Michaela Kobsa Mark
2010-09-26
A fundamental part of traveling is the breaking down of stereotypes. In six days, that process will begin. My junior year in high school, we were reading Wuthering Heights, and my English teacher taught me to look at texts through different lenses. Reading a passage from a feminist viewpoint offered such a different analysis than...
Read MoreMy Convergence With GCY
Johannes Raatz
2010-09-26
Human rights, economic development in the third world, and social enterprise are my strongest fields of curiosity; exactly the complex issues that Global Citizen Year addresses in training high school graduates for the twenty-first century.
Read MoreWhat is Empathy?
Lily Shaffer
2010-09-26
I’m hungry. It’s 11:02 on Friday night and I’m really freakin’ hungry. This is because I had approximately 2/3 of a cup of rice for dinner. Tonight, we had an Oxfam hunger fast. Of the 29 Fellows, five got to eat a typical, delicious (and I mean, unbelievable IONS food) dinner with drinks, dessert, utensils—the...
Read MoreThe San Franciscan
Thomas Linford
2010-09-25
My name is Tom Linford and I was born and raised in San Francisco, California and I will be going to Brazil next year. My alma mater, Lowell High School, is the oldest high school west of the Mississippi. It is an extremely high caliber high school academically because it is the top public high...
Read MoreFar From Indiana
Emily Hess
2010-09-25
There have been a lot of things that have gone through my mind over the past week or so that I’ve been with GCY Fellows here at IONS in California. A lot of these things I don’t know how to convey with words, but mostly, it’s been a challenge and a learning experience I have...
Read MoreHello, I’m Justin Moore
Justin Moore
2010-09-23
Hey Ya’ll, my name is Justin Moore and I am from Austin, Texas. I grew up in Dallas but moved when I was sixteen and started going to the Khabele School, a small, progressive school that values learning in its purest state and not necessarily through an institution. As I fell in love learning at...
Read MoreFirst blog post
Cooper Wright
2010-09-23
Living in one place for all of my life, I never have really seen the world. I was always wondering what was out there, and always seeking new adventures. Going to Brazil seems to be the climax of this curiosity, as in less than two weeks, I will be leaving for Salvador, Brazil. While I...
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