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
Mon Voyage
Julia Highsmith
2013-07-14
When the summer of 5th grade came around I was beyond excited, nervous, and ready to see what it would have in store. My church takes one group of middle schoolers and two groups of high schoolers on mission trips. Middle schoolers go in early July and high schoolers go in late July. Now I...
Read More
Free to Fall
Lillian Wells
2013-07-12
The first time I got into any kind of “real” trouble was in my third grade class. Perhaps it was the sun shining through the windows or the fact that she was teaching times tables that I had already memorized, but either way, my restless nine-year-old self deemed the classroom too confining, the lesson irritatingly effortless, and...
Read More
the colour of my skin: thoughts on diversity
Emma Anderson
2013-07-10
I am awoken each morning by the sounds of Arabic prayer calls piercing out from the loudspeakers of a nearby mosque into the thick, clicking dark. Not a day goes by that I don’t make a baby cry or a donkey cart-driving seven year-old squeal out “Toubab!” in sickening delight based solely on the fact...
Read More
Colonization and Senegal
Emma Anderson
2013-07-10
Colonization and Its Legacy The world is in a constant state of flux. Empires rise and fall while the nations of the conquered seen to fade back in the shadows of their conquerors. The history of the dominating Romans pervades our ideas of the ancient world and it has always been from the perspective of...
Read More
To New Beginnings
Allie McKinney
2013-07-10
About this time a year ago I was starting the college search process. I knew exactly what I wanted to major in, that I wanted to attend a medium-to-small school, I wanted to stay in the South, and, call me vain, I had to live on a nice campus. And even though I found a...
Read More
My Road to Senegal
Samuel Normington
2013-07-10
Every life begins with a birth, and ends with a death. Everyone will get to the end eventually, but the exciting part happens along the way. There are an unbelievable number of roads to take, and yet everyone forges a new path; they define their life and they decide how to get to the end....
Read More
A New Beginning
Mouna Algahaithi
2013-07-09
My heart was racing. It was 3: 55 pm on June 5th and no matter how many times I refreshed my inbox, there was no news from Global Citizen Year. “Maybe it’s time to accept that I wasn’t accepted,” I thought to myself, 20 seconds before the phone rang with a message that would indeed...
Read More
First Steps and the Before
Guzly Guzman
2013-07-09
What can I do to get support? What can I give to get and give back in return? How can I do all this before my departure in August? These are only a few of the questions I have to seriously ask myself this summer. But before I get ahead of myself, let me explain...
Read More
If You Jump, I Jump
Emily Ford
2013-07-09
Every muscle in my body was taut with terror. My legs trembled and the pole on which I was perched shook along with them. Sucking air deep within my chest, I closed my eyes to the ground 20 feet below. I was frozen for an unbearable and indeterminable amount of time until that recurrent thought...
Read More
Turn On, Tune In, and Drop Out: The Un-Official Gap Year Motto
Emma Anderson
2013-07-09
Turn On, Tune In, and Drop Out: Discovering the Difference Between Knowledge and Understanding ““Turn on” meant go within to activate your neural and genetic equipment. Become sensitive to the many and various levels of consciousness and the specific triggers that engage them. “Tune in” meant interact harmoniously with the world around you – externalize,...
Read More
Capstone Video
Caroline Blanchard
2013-05-21
My life in Boussoura was filled with smiles and laughter and these beautiful people who made me so incredibly happy as Kadidia Souare. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXd4dHcufKw&feature=player_embedded
Read More
Suspended Animation
Barker Carlock
2013-05-15
Flight is truly a miracle, a spectacular marvel. There are four main principles to the concept of flight: lift, drag, weight, and thrust. I feel as though all of these forces are compounded upon me from all directions creating my first few days back in the States a sort of suspended animation. Never would I...
Read More