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
This 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 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 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 MoreBeing a part of change
Kedisha Samuels
2010-09-22
For so long, I have envisioned myself traveling somewhere far away. Longing for the chance to escape the walls of my community, the chance to explore life and all it has to offer, but most of all, the chance to explore me. When most people think about the future and what they predict themselves doing,...
Read MoreWho am I?
Naomi Wright
2010-09-21
At 4:46 PM on Monday, September 20th, I sat down with the intent to answer that question. Lounging in the welcome shade of Petaluma oak trees, I struggled to find even a reference point for where to begin. Should I look to my past? My circumstances up till now—people I’ve known, things I’ve experienced, places...
Read MoreIntroductory Post
Amanda Brinegar
2010-09-21
As a child, my parents would often find me, independent of supervision, exploring beneath tables and desks in their workplace for used bubble gum. Without much thought, my small toddler fist would stick the gum into my o-shaped mouth to be discovered. Although I no longer chew used gum, I believe that I am still...
Read MoreThe Beginning of a New Adventure
Erin Lang
2010-09-21
I’m from Carmel, Indiana, a northern suburb about twenty minutes from the heart of Indianapolis. Since I was a small girl, challenge was never something I was afraid of. I had a playful and competitive spirit, and was always up for an adventure. My unusual passion for language and literature followed with me everywhere I...
Read MoreMy first post
Clara Sekowski
2010-09-21
I want so badly to release all of my current thoughts and ideas and emotions in ink like veins on this page but I know that tomorrow, at this rate, this and all of today will seem juvenile and I will be embarrassed at how young I seem. Which is how I usually feel. I...
Read MoreMy introduction
Tess Langan
2010-09-21
When I explained to people in my hometown of Verona, New Jersey that I was taking a bridge year they usually fell into one of two camps. Either they would agree with my friend Rebecca who wrote on my facebook wall “I’m so freaking excited for you!! And by that I mean I’m so incredibly...
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