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
The plunge
Jacob Stern
2011-08-30
Global Citizen Year is damn good looking. But when I met everyone for the first time when US training began, we were truly motley crew. At any given lunch table, I’d catch slang from the cornfields of Iowa, the mountains of New Hampshire, the swamps of Florida, and the hills of San Francisco. Initially, cultures...
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Whose Choice is This?
Lydia Crush
2011-08-29
It’s midnight and the big day waits for me once I wake up, when I find out what my apprenticeship will be. It’s like the Ceremony of Twelves in The Giver. Jonas waits in apprehension while others decide what his career will be. His interests have been noted and his skills were tested and studied....
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57
Joan Hanawi
2011-08-22
It’s craziness. It really is. 57 like-minded youth from all over the United States—flying, driving, doing whatever it takes to congregate in one singular place. 57 young adults who have all been consumed by the same passion—to tap into innate potential by willingly embracing a cross-cultural immersion. 57 students attempting to break societal restrictions and...
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Familiar Faces
Lydia Crush
2011-08-22
The usual questions I’m asked are “do you know any Spanish,” “have you ever been out if the country before,” “do you know anyone else in the organization.” My answer has so far been a huge grin and a laughing “no.” For a while I couldn’t understand why it might matter if I know people...
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A Silent Hike, Me?
Elizabeth Warren
2011-08-22
Stanford University is gorgeous! California weather is like Florida’s fall weather, in one day of travel I went from super hot and humid summer weather to cool, nice Cali weather. One of the more awesome things here is that all of us Fellows get along great! Thursday, during the morning session we explored Mindfulness, finding...
Read MoreWhat would you do with a year?
Peter Saudek
2011-08-01
A few short months ago I arrived back to the States after spending 8 months in Ecuador during my Global Citizen Year. In this short movie I have incorporated footage and photographs from the time I spent in Ecuador. The video highlights the main components and aspects of my Global Citzen Year: learning, giving back, exchage,...
Read MoreThis Isn’t That
Jacob Stern
2011-07-28
Hello! I’m Jake. My story? Well, I was raised in California and spent the first 13 years of my life in the suburbs and Jewish Day School—the next four were spent in the same suburb and public high school. OK, that sounds pretty dull. There was definitely fun thrown in here and there. But, for...
Read MoreAnd so I went to teach
Kirin Gupta
2011-07-28
An artist who bridged the distance from Nuku’alofa, Tonga to Washington, D.C. Having begun with Global Citizen Year, a new sort of awareness prompts me to take second glances in places where I would not customarily look carefully. It is something to be grateful for, I am sure, for beyond that understanding, once it can...
Read MoreCuriosity and Discovery
Lily Ellenberg
2011-07-28
Hello, my name is Lily Ellenberg. I have lived in Portland, Oregon my entire life (so far), and I just graduated from the Catlin Gabel School. I went to Catlin for fifteen years, the vast majority of my life thus far. Both my parents work at the school, and my little sister also attends. In...
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Patience
Bennett Quintard
2011-07-15
Flash back to December 2014 I sat in my old living room feeling quite out of place on the red plastic covered couch that soaked me in sweat while simply lounging around. I batted away incessant flies not even slightly deterred as I swatted one of their friends away for the 100th time that evening....
Read MoreWhy I chose Global Citizen Year
Elizabeth Warren
2011-07-14
I already knew I wanted to take a year off, one of the main reason being I had changed my mind on what I wanted to do and major in at least twenty times. I didn’t want to go to college unsure and I thought a year off would be great. Now all I had...
Read MoreTravel Bug
Tessalyn Morrison
2011-07-14
To say that I have caught the travel bug would be a little bit of an understatement. I have caught the travel elephant and am enjoying every ride. Travel has become a passion of mine and has given me more exposure to the world than I can handle at some points. In this extremely malleable...
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