GEICO Award

Thank you to the lovely folks at both NSCS and GEICO for helping me study abroad! Below are the essays I wrote for the competition. I am ecstatic right now! As a millennial, it means a lot to write something about your aspirations and have someone not think you're crazy. Decide for yourself:

NSCS GEICO Award

1. Describe how you exemplify 3 of GEICO’s core values: Integrity, Service, and Growth.

From my perspective, these three values are core, and therefore irreconcilably intertwined. To say that service can happen without integrity or integrity without growth is hard to picture. To show this, I will tell a story about a time I grew–a growth motivated by integrity and centered around service.

I was less than thrilled when I learned I would be moving to India for my senior year of high school. India would be the first country I had been to where I could not speak the most popular language. The devastating poverty in combination with horrific pollution and widespread corruption gives India the potential to be a scary place. Not only that, all I had seen were montages of malnourished children squatting in garbage heaps. Death and disease seemed to haunt every alley.

Upon leaving the airport, I realized I was wrong. New Delhi was the most living city I have ever seen. The hustle and bustle is without comparison. Everywhere you look, there are people. Sometimes you look into a bush to see one man giving another a haircut. Occasionally, a motorcyclist would weave in between two cars holding a ladder or with a bag full of chairs on his lap. The streets may not have been clean, but they were certainly alive. Everything I was expecting to find in India was missing–until I signed up for a service program.

The American Embassy School of New Delhi had numerous service organizations, one of which was called “Make a Difference” or MAD. It’s goal was to help impoverished children learn English. Entering their home, the nearby slum, was everything I had imagined of India. The first thing that hits you is the smell. I will not go into detail, but to a person raised in the “first world,” I was out of my comfort zone and a little afraid. I tiptoed around the piles of mud and ducked below plastic tarps on strings. The best walls were made of two-by-fours; the rest were made of sticks, sheet metal, and string. The entire place looked temporary and seconds from collapsing. I quickly grew to regret my decision to join MAD.

Then, I looked more carefully at my surroundings. A mother was preparing lunch for her daughter over a tiny campfire. Children were popping out of every gap, only to disappear into the neighboring alleyway. This place was a home to hundreds of people; it was a community. I realized the absurdity of my disgust. I was worried about getting my jeans dirty while scores of children gathered around, desperately trying to learn English in the hopes that they could be employable. Not only did it put things into perspective, it changed my life.

For years I honestly believed people my age only did community service to look good for applications. I thought service was one of those things you are supposed to say you enjoy, yet privately view as a burden. Surrounded by those children, I realized what it can do for you: provide an opportunity to grow. The belief I am most ashamed about is that I believed I was the teacher. While service is usually a privileged-unprivileged relationship, it is certainly a two way street, and my life is the one that changed more dramatically from "making a difference."

Since that moment, I have continued to give my all in the effort to make my communities better. To me, giving up a Sunday to teach Hispanic children how to swim is a selfish act. I know I am technically 'helping' in the traditional sense, but I do it because I know I will grow and because I know the experience will make me better equipped to do more in the future. Integrity, service, and growth are not just buzzwords, they are what drive me towards my future and motivate all that I do.


2. Why did you choose to pursue the undergraduate degree that you did? Please discuss your professional aspirations and how your undergraduate degree will help you achieve these goals.

My aim is to improve the lives of people in the most effective way possible; I want to play to my skill set. For me, this means bridging gaps and bringing people together. Due to my background growing up overseas, my talents drove me to pursue global studies, anthropology, and language courses for the bulk of my undergraduate education. Professionally, this leads me towards a few different paths. My ultimate goal is to work for the U.S. Department of State, and I am pursuing the degree that will best prepare me for that lifestyle.

In an increasingly globalized world, a degree in Global Studies might seem redundant, but I argue it is one of the highest areas of illiteracy in common knowledge today. Especially in America, we are constantly exposed to aspects of different cultures and ways of life. For example: watching TV for 15 minutes you might see an actress from India, watch a commercial for Mexican food, hear two British accents, and take-in breathtaking mountain scenery from Norway. It would be easy to fool yourself into thinking you are experiencing different cultures, but one important thing is missing. Almost all of these experiences were Americanized or performances of cultures tailored to a specifically American audience. Realizing exactly what you can and cannot know from your perspective is something that took me a very long time to understand.

This idea, often called normalization, is also a fundamental aspect of anthropology. We each wear a pair of glasses through which we see the world. Understanding how those glasses manipulate our vision allows us to better interact with people from other cultures (or countries). Something you may consider normal could be extremely strange or even nonexistent in other cultures. On a global scale, this can cause serious problems. One example from "Dancing Skeletons" by Kathy Dettwyler is the CARE intervention in Mali. CARE, an aid group, planted carrots and gave vaccinations to children in rural Malian villages. However, due to the cultural factors, the children were not eating the carrots and vitamin A deficiency persisted. Here, simply taking the time to understand the culture could have made a global interaction much more effective.

Another barrier to effective global interactions is language. I speak Spanish, I am studying Japanese, and I hope to begin working on Dutch/Afrikaans later in the summer and fall. I chose Japanese because it is not only a language family I have no experience with, but a culture I have had no contact with. Japanese language classes have been a fantastic lesson both in communication and linguistic anthropology; I have learned about a language and culture I would have otherwise never experienced. As for Dutch/Afrikaans, I am moving to the Netherlands in June and studying abroad in South Africa from August to December. My father is already fluent in Dutch and I will have almost half a year of immersion in the two related languages. I am excited to see what this language teaches me. Finally, Spanish has already taken me to South and Central America multiple times, made me great friends, and provided me with incredible opportunities stateside.

In summary, I hope to help bridge gaps in people separated by nationality, culture, or language. From there I will do my best to effect positive change and serve my country via what I do best.

(Old) Zeeland

Living in New Zealand for two years always bugged the geography nerd inside me. What continent is this? Which one is Mt. Doom? Where is Old Zealand? Almost five years later, I found my final answer.

Zeeland, or the place that makes New Zealand new, is a profoundly quirky province. The similarities to Kiwi country stop there. Here, the homeless are bilingual, mussels are cheap and the bridges will actively try to kill you... but more on that later.

Like much of the Netherlands, about 1/3 of Middelburg, Zeeland's capital, was destroyed during WWII. To this day, however,  it is still unknown whether German bombs or French artillery caused the devastation. I posit the Dutch thought, "well it's flattened anyway; no use pointing fingers" and quietly–yet efficiently–started rebuilding.

Despite the destruction, the Middelburg of today overflows with history; you can see at least one massive tower from every point in the city. There is so much history, in fact, that a humongous church was presumably the best location for a carnival. This was a jarring contrast to the empty, malodorous grass fields that host American festivals.

The cage nearly caught the wall a few times

I couldn't help but grin at the thought of the seedy, unorganized fairs in America secretly hiding a massive international carnival empire.

A Dutch scam, probably

After wandering around aimlessly for a bit, we decided to go on a boat tour. Honestly, this decision was made because we had no idea what else to do in Zeeland. We squeezed into a boat and started debating where the boat would go. The canal only went about 30 meters in each direction before a three-foot-high bridge spanned the gap. There's no way they would risk decapitating everyone, we thought.

Eend! (Translate that)

Since the instructions were in Dutch and the scenery was eye-catching, this was actually a very real possibility. Even my Dutch-speaking father zoned out and nearly face-planted a bridge. 

All-in-all a successful day trip, especially given neither one of us had a clue what there was in Zeeland. That is not an understatement. We actually only went because of the name.