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 I Believe
Camille LeBlanc
2012-07-10
I can be a little compulsive. On paper, I write just above the line so the words hover perfectly—never touching, never slanting; the spacing is regular, the letters consistent. When I highlight, I always keep a tissue nearby to dab the excess ink that forms in a small (large) puddle at the end of the...
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My Life Trajectory
Joshua Reason
2012-07-10
My road to taking a gap year has been a long and interesting one. I recently graduated from a private high school in Atherton, California where gap years were always presented as “Backpacking across Europe”; although gap years looked fun and exciting, I had yet to hear a story that justified putting college on hold...
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A Year to…
Trevor Porter
2012-07-03
A gap year between high school and college can be whatever you make of it. It could be a transformative experience where you venture off somewhere you’ve never been before to discover yourself. It could be a year where you work to regain focus and passion for learning. It could be a year where you...
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Returning Home
Joan Hanawi
2012-06-23
The expressions of utter shock and surprise mirrored my own smiling face as I laughed at the absurdity of it all. An Indonesian girl living in Huntington Beach, California speaking Ecuadorian Spanish. But that’s what happens when you become a Global Citizen Year Fellow. If I could choose one word to describe Global Citizen Year...
Read MoreReflections on The Blue Sweater
Priyanka Rao
2012-06-23
The Entrepreneur steps onto the scene of the developing world, and snaps her trained fingers… only to find that third-world countries don’t follow the same rhythm she does. As Jacqueline Novogratz begins down the path of international development, she faces many of the trials we do as Global Citizen Year (GCY) Fellows: high school graduates...
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Walking in Another’s Shoes
Jacklyn Joy Byrd
2012-06-23
Before my gap year in Ecuador, I believed my capacity for moral imagination was above average. I constantly told myself, “I’m so empathetic that I naturally enter the other’s shoes!” As a slightly cocky high-school graduate, maybe this was true. However, I had challenged myself to become a global citizen. During the first week of...
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The Cookbook Confessions
Sienna Walker
2012-06-15
Three. I have spent a total of three hours watching Food Network and I’m supposed to lead a cooking class? I’ll have it known that those three hours did, in fact, take place in the gym, without option, while working out. Now with it established that I am no Rachael Ray or Bobby Flay or...
Read MoreSecond Sight
Kirin Gupta
2012-06-15
GCY fellowship is a perspective builder, like the best teachers, parents, and mentors. It is a year for each of us to take on that responsibility, individually, to expand our own worldviews and develop a second sight. The second sight of a student who has lived in a house without floors and eaten off of...
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House of Broken Crickets
Taylor Lawson
2012-06-15
Being back in the US, I’m rediscovering little things that I forgot about. One that comes to mind as I listen to a confused chirping from the corner, is the crickets. My family isn’t sure why, but our house attracts crickets. Often they have missing or crushed limbs. Others are babies, so small that you...
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