When I was 15, I volunteered at a city dump in Porto Velho, Brazil where people lived and raised their families. I had never seen such poverty in one location, and never have since. It was eye opening and shocking experience that jarred me from my safe, assumed perfect world. I began to consider the multitude of problems that others faced. I learned that there was so much that I did not know about other cultures and that they did not know about the US. This consideration and surprise is part of what lead me to study international relations in college. From an early age I was interested in politics and why the world is the way it is. I always questioned my mom and other adults about things that I thought never made sense. Like why did all the moms on TV stay home all day while my single mother was always working? This confusion contributed to my desire to study politics in college. As I progressed through college, I became more interested in gender and how it affects the political system. When given a chance I wrote about women and politics to further my knowledge. I knew I wanted to focus in on women in the international arena when completing graduate research.
I discovered my career goal of working for the State Department ever since I discovered exactly what it is the State Department does. As I matured and expanded my boundaries, the career track I wanted changed, but I have never wavered on wanting to join the State Department. I want to become a Foreign Service Officer with a track in public Diplomacy or Consular work. I want to help brighten the image of America abroad. I believe that the only way to do this is to interact on a daily basis with the people of the country I am working in. I have had the opportunity to do exactly this in both Brazil and Russia. I hope to continue to do so when I live and study in Skopje, Macedonia under the auspices of a Fulbright Fellowship during the 2011-2012 academic year.
As I started college, there was no doubt in my mind I would study abroad as part of my desire to see international relations in action. I was able to achieve one of my life goals in my second year at college when I completed a semester study abroad in St. Petersburg, Russia. It was purely exhilarating to see another culture in such depth, to live, breathe and be a part of it. One day, early in the semester, I was wandering around downtown St. Petersburg, utterly lost, freezing cold, and unable to talk to anyone since I had only had three classes of Russian. I was having the time of my life. It was then, when I couldn’t stop smiling in the weather that I usually detested, that I knew that this, right here, this culture is what I wanted to study. I fell in love with the city and the history of Russia. I suddenly knew that my life was going in the right direction and that I wanted to study this culture and others like it. I needed to know more about the world that I lived in, especially the former Soviet Union. Upon my return on the US, I started taking more courses on Russia and Eastern Europe, which only solidified my desire to work for the State Department later in life, after getting an advanced degree.
When thinking about my future after undergrad, I knew that I wanted to complete graduate level research on civil society in Eastern Europe before undertaking a US master’s program in diplomacy. I had always known about Fulbright and tried to emulate the philosophy and ideals behind the program. I became interested in Macedonia when learning about Eastern Europe; the Balkans were largely ignored. They were never part of the curriculum. I knew that I wanted to delve deeper into the Balkans and write my thesis about them. I tried to check books over the summer to learn more about this area, the region that created the political science term “balkanization,” but there was literally only one book about the region at my local library. When I looked further for a book specific to Macedonia there were none. This only sparked my interest more, only made me want to study this culture more. Going to Macedonia to study gender and government will tie all of my interests of improving the world around me together; it will link my past studies and my future career.
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