So I'm in Brazil on a Fulbright Scholarship. What is a Fulbright scholarship one may ask? A Fulbright Scholarship is a cross cultural program sponsored by the US State Department to promote cross cultural understanding between the US and other countries. There are different types of Fulbright Scholarships, those where foreigners come to the US and those where US citizens travel abroad. We all know which one of those categories I fall into. Fulbright sponsors US citizens to study abroad in any of 155 countries worldwide. (Make note: NONE of those countries are Pacific Island countries, which I personally find discriminatory and outrageous.) Each year there are approximately 7500 US Fulbright Scholars; I am one of those 7500. The primary source of funding for the Fulbright Program is an annual appropriation from Congress to the U.S State Department, so write your representative and thank them for contributing to my crazy trip to Brazil. Within a country where Fulbright operates, there are two basic programs: a research program and an English as a second language program. For the research program you can design your own research study and work with someone in the country, to promote crosscultural understanding in your topic area. The other way you can get a Fulbright Scholarship is by teaching English as a second language in your country. Since my area of expertise is marine biology, I applied to the research program. To give you an idea of the size of the Fulbright program, just within Brazil alone, I am part of a cohort of 36 research scholars and 5 teaching scholars that were awarded this year.
As I mentioned in my first blog, this whole process of applying for the Fulbright Scholarship started about a year and a half ago. Step 1: come up with an idea to do research in a foreign country (ahem not a Pacific Island Country or Territory). OK I’ve got some idea of wanting to do seahorse research and now thanks to Dr. Vincent and Dr. Rosa, in Brazil. Step 2: July 2008, I email to the Duke Fulbright Committee a half page proposal outlining my idea and potential in country contact. Step 3: By early September 2008, write a two page research proposal, timeline for work and project budget. (Did I mention that trying to figure out a budget for 1.5 years in the future is kind of a daunting task?) So as I’m collecting my thoughts on these documents, and at the same time I’m also collecting recomendations- three professional ones (thanks Lisa, Rafe and Jen), a foreign language recommendation (Jake- you are the best!), and last but not least a recomendation from someone in Brazil willing to work with me (Dr. Rosa….needless to say you are amazing).
Ok so let’s take a second to digress and talk about the foreign language requirement. Fulbright states that in order to apply to do research in a country, you must be able to prove fluency in the country’s language. I noted the asterisk next to the country of Brazil and realized if one could prove fluency in Spanish, and enrollment in a Portuguese language class, then theoretically one could get around the Portuguese fluency requirement. So I talked with a Georgetown Spanish professor, and with no other options for a Portuguese language class in rural coastal North Carolina, enrolled online at the University of Wisconsin for Portuguese 101.
Back to the application process. With all my documents and recommendations in order, I turned in my documents to Duke (Sept 2008). Two weeks later I had an interview with the Duke Fulbright Committee, conducted partially in English, partially in Spanish, and partially in Portuguese. Conjure up in your mind, sitting around a square table with six colleagues, grilling you about your latest proposal in multiple different languages. Whoa is right. I was expecting part of the interview to be conducted in Spanish, the big surprise however, was when the woman conducting the interview said with an evil smile on her face, “Lindsay we have two portuguese speakers here with us around the table. We’re going to have them talk to you and see if you can understand them.” Talk about panic setting in, I had only been in my online Portuguese class for about 2 weeks and 1 day, and I had yet to really open the book. The man to my left spoke first (he identified himself as a native Brazilian speaker), and thankfully he was really easy to understand. It sounded mostly like Spanish and I was able to repeat almost verbatim what he had said to me. The woman on my right, was from Portugual, and from the second she started speaking, it sounded like French gibberish. Thankfully when I admitted I could understand nothing of what she said, everyone around the table laughed and we all agreed that it was a good thing I was applying to go to Brazil and not Portugal. So with the interview behind me, I waited three or four more weeks before Duke informed me they were recommending my application to the US State Department! Then in mid January, I learned I had made it through the next round, and the State Department was recommending my application to the Brazilian State Department. The Brazil State Department then evaluated the numerous proposals for in country research and determined mine, on Habitat Preferences of the Longsnout Seahorse in Ceara, Brazil, was worthy of the illustrious Fulbright Scholarship. So on a sunny afternoon in early April, after a run to clear my head, in the driveway of 5006 Bogue Avenue, in Morehead City, NC, I found out I had become a Fulbright Scholar.
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