When I first saw Global Citizen Year’s advertisement publicizing the opportunity to take a gap year between high school and college I had two options: click the ad and discover that it was just another scam, or ignore it and save myself from certain disappointment. Although it wasn’t obvious to me at the time, I’m ecstatic that I made the right choice. This was two years ago. At the time I had begun considering several colleges and universities with distaste and skepticism. I had never considered taking a gap year, and Global Citizen Year opened my mind to the option. I knew very suddenly that this experience is exactly what I need after years of reading from a textbook on a desk in a giant cinder block with windows.
My name is Peyton Foley and I live just outside of Atlanta, Georgia. I see my peers taking off for college and the upcoming year becomes more real each day. I am beginning to reach out and meet the other Fellows and am preparing for the adventure that lies ahead. I believe that the experience will continue to realize itself through my eyes until I step off the airplane in Atlanta in April and fully understand what has happened and how much I’ve learned. However, while I am gone this blog may be my strongest tie to all the friends and family who support the other fellows, Global Citizen Year, and me. I hope that anyone interested in the program or my life in Ecuador will follow this blog and leave comments while I am gone.
The other fellows and I are stepping into an auditorium much larger than those of even the largest universities in the United States. We will soon leave this single nation behind and begin to experience and contribute to the auditorium that is our world. The speaker is life and, although life is not a certified professor with a PhD in the humanities or the sciences, I believe that it has something very important to say. Through Global Citizen Year, the other fellows and I have been given the opportunity to listen more closely to the lessons that life can teach us.
