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
Stripping Naked with Nothing to Lose
Aitran Doan
2014-07-15
Who am I? I am the prep school child, the welfare child and the immigrant child from rural Vietnam. Before my Global Citizen Year, I was scared to share who I was because nothing fit together. I was scared my first-world friends would pity my third world past. I was scared that everyone would think...
Read MoreLos Manos
Aitran Doan
2014-07-15
Hands are a great indication of the work we do and types of life we lead. “Los manos” is also a term used to describe workers, often times those who work in the field. It dehumanizes people, creating the image that these people are born to serve one purpose: to labor all day in the...
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Year In Review
Russell Gens
2014-07-01
The old cliché tells us that a picture is worth a thousand words. As painful as it is to hear this trite little expression, I think that it holds true. As such, I thought that for my last blog post of the program cycle I would throw together a little gallery of some of my...
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A New Perspective
Aitran Doan
2014-06-02
A week after returning from my eight-month stay in Ecuador, I found myself on Stanford’s campus for the “Admitted Students Weekend”. There I was, wearing my alpaca sweater, my mismatched earrings, and what someone called “cultural necklace” amidst the crowd of over 1,000 newly admitted Stanford students. We were all gathered to explore the campus...
Read MoreProtected: Closure
Simone Fillion-Raff
2014-06-02
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Read MoreThe Good Type of Scattered
Soe Tha
2014-05-23
They say home is where the heart is. Then I am happy that my heart is scattered all across the globe. There is a piece in California, U.S.A., where my family lives. There is another piece in Yangon, Myanmar, my birthplace, where my aunts, grandparents, and cousins are. But the biggest chunk of my heart...
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Had I known…
Alexandra Lines
2014-05-23
I would not have done it. Had I known what the last year of my life had in store for me, I would not have gotten on the plane at the end of August. Had I known that I would live in a city made of cement, I would not have gone. Had I known...
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More Than I Ever Have Before
Leah Mesh-Ferguson
2014-05-23
I cried, More than I ever have before. I sobbed, Body wracking sobs that left me tired. I did it in the dark, Holding it until I was alone. But the tears shed at night were not alone. There were tears of joy. Tears of departure. Tears of laughter. And oh, did I laugh, More...
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Taters
Russell Gens
2014-05-09
“Today, we’re going closer to heaven” Those were the words my friend Adela greeted me with yesterday. She and her husband had invited me to dig up the potatoes we planted together in some of my first weeks on their farm in the neighboring town of Susutul. Together with an army of in-laws we embarked...
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Quotes from the Year
Eva Ackerman
2014-05-05
Student: “You can only have a good mom or a good dad. Some people don’t have a good mom nor a good dad, but you definitely can’t have both a good mom and a good dad.” Student: “I don’t want to go to University because I don’t want more professors screaming at me than...
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Identity
Lauren Guido
2014-04-13
Throughout high school I searched for my identity through means of reading books, exercise, self-reflection, making friends based on common interests and goals, and questioning what I want out of my life. Fast forward to a few weeks ago when I was peeling and chopping yucca, a white starchy root vegetable that grows wild in...
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Perspective
JT Su
2014-04-11
Nine months ago, on a cloudy August morning, I got on a plane bound for home. But this wasn’t just any home. It was my home thousands of miles away from my physical and psychological home that I would be calling my second home. Remember that chilly night I landed in Ecuador—completely confused with where...
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