What is the Watson Fellowship?
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| (the Watson Fellowship as described by the Watson Foundation website) |
--The Watson Fellowship is a one-year grant awarded to forty graduation seniors from forty member colleges of the Watson Foundation. Recipients of the grant venture out into the vast unknowns of the world to explore an independent research project and plunge into the depths of their own development on their own personally designed and executed whirlwind tour of the planet. It is a non-academic grant, and fellows are not affiliated with any particular institutions such as a university or government agency during their Watson year. It's meant to be a great adventure, at its root. There are some rules. Among them:
1. Fellows may not return to the United States (or their home country) for the duration of the 12 months abroad.
2. Fellows may not travel in countries where they have previously spent any significant amount of time. That means no Guatemala, Costa Rica, Belize, Bhutan, Switzerland, Austria, or Germany for me.
3. Fellows are to maintain their independence to the utmost. We travel alone. (Of course--we make friends and pair up with other groups during the journey, through contacts we make, organizations we volunteer with, but we are intended to remain independent and in control of our own efforts so that we can carry out our projects.)
4. We must report back to the Foundation with quarterly reports on how we are doing, how the project is going, and how the budget is holding up. These are meant to be like "long letters home" according to the representatives from Watson.
5. At the completion of the year abroad (August 1st, 2015), all fellows must attend a reputedly magical conference where we at last get to meet one another--we who have shared in such separate journeys, linked in our independence and drive.
Aside from those, we are essentially free to carry out the year however we want, as long as it fits our project. It's pretty dang amazing.
How does one apply to be a Watson Fellow?
--There are a few criteria to becoming a Fellow, and it is a long application process. Here's the breakdown:
Applicants have to be nominated by one of the forty member colleges that are part of the Watson network. That means that there is a preliminary process to become one of your college's nominees. At Wheaton, this meant working with our school's Watson liaison (Lisa Gavigan was mine--she is a remarkable woman, and was Wheaton's first Watson Fellow) to put together a proposal and personal statement. This process really gets going at the beginning of senior year, but I encourage you to think about your project ideas as soon as you are serious about applying.
The project proposal and personal statement are the major components of the application. I had never revised pieces of writing so heavily as I did these two documents. It took months of development, discussion, help, editing, tears, fear, and faith to produce these and submit them to the Watson Foundation with my application.
To become a nominee from Wheaton, I went through a series of interviews and faculty panels during the fall and was selected to proceed with sending my application to the Foundation in November. These were scary, but in reality, were very helpful in making me more sure of my plans, my ideas, and my conviction.
After I submitted my application as one of four of Wheaton's nominees, I began practicing for my pending interview with a representative from the Foundation. This meant doing mock interviews with friends, family, and faculty. It also meant doing lots of research about my countries, and how I would carry out my project if I won.
My interview was scheduled for February, and my interviewer, Craig Safan, came to Wheaton and talked to me in the room where I usually worked in the evenings as a writing tutor. We talked for about an hour--about my project, about writing, music, travel, and sharing information about ourselves. It wasn't as scary as I had worked it up in my head to be. I left feeling like I had made a friend--but I was still nervous, no doubt.
After the interview it was pretty much completely out of my hands whether I would win or not. Forty fellows would be selected out of the pool from the forty colleges. In mid-March I received an email and a very excited phone call from Lisa Gavigan.
This next moment is not so much a part of the application process, but I'd like to share it:
When I found out that I had won, I sat in quiet disbelief. I was sitting outside a small cafe in Shoshone, California during a week-long trip to Death Valley for a geology course. I had never been to a desert before. I didn't think I would hear from the foundation until I returned home, but they decided to reveal the information a few days early. I turned on my phone for the first time all week and booted up the wifi signal. I read the email many times over.
Finding out such incredible news--that I'd been awarded the opportunity and the money to breathe this dream of an adventure to life--was bittersweet. My best friend had also applied, and she didn't win. She was with me in Death Valley, and we were having an amazing time learning about this barren and yet lively array of mountains and rock fields. I didn't feel like celebrating. We didn't talk about it until a few days later when we were back at our house at Wheaton. She took it in remarkable stride, and I believe her that she is proud of me. I am very proud of her too. The Foundation missed out on somebody great by turning her down.
I was still very excited about my success that day in Shoshone, nonetheless, and so I went right away to tell the desert. I put my phone away, avoiding my other classmates, and walked out into the mid-morning behind our research station. There was a big field bordered on two sides by a brush-shrouded stream--it was the only running water around for miles. The sharp gray mountains blocked out half the sky in front of me; the sky had faint streaks of white and yellowish clouds near its brusque horizon. Once I was out of earshot of the research station, I danced around in the field, feeling very happy and free.
I believe the Watson is intended to perpetuate that feeling in its fellows. It's meant to be challenging, frustrating, inspiring, invigorating, and liberating. The Foundation has a reputation for choosing its fellows based on their character first, and their projects secondarily. I look at the award as an investment in myself. I am amazed and deeply grateful to the Watson Foundation for trusting me in this, and I promise to do my best to live up to it.
This will be a year to do just what I want--a time to set the precedent for the rest of my life.
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