Our first assignment is to blog about Fulbright. While it’s not on the top of my “to blog about” topics I guess it’ll bring things full circle…all Fulbright brings to mind is failure. I guess that’s a bit dramatic. And I should be telling you that what “doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” right? Or is that just what everyone wanted to hear me say? Or is that just what I wanted them to hear me say? Probably the latter.
In any case, I applied for a Fulbright my senior year of college. Pretty much all of the teachers laughed at me. Picked on me. For serious, I’ve never seen anything like it. Here I was, studio art major with a minor in English, a job at the writing center, music director at our campus radio station, head of the darkroom (whatever that truly meant…), lived on the beach, had some great friends, a pretty hip boyfriend, dreams of attending law school, and an interest in studying photography and a way of life in new Zealand.
I had been working on a cultural project in italy and new york around a similar theme and wanted to explore it in new Zealand. I read everything I could about that country. I contacted the university of Auckland and got a few classes rounded up. I got in touch with this amazing photographer, edith sagapolu, a native maori, and I was going to intern with her while taking classes in photography. I thought my project, my contacts, my knowledge…were pretty cool. But the teachers on the Fulbright committee didn’t think so.
So we had to meet with about seven different teachers in this boardroom at least once a month for three months to go over our application, our essays, and our progress. I dreaded each of these meetings. My art professors, not included in said meetings, and peers were super excited for me. They supported me. They read my eassays and listened to my complaints about all the work I had to do on top of my Fulbright work.
Anyways, so I meet with these liberal arts teachers and it’s the last time I’ll see them before i send off my application. And there’s that one professor. She was my environmental law professor (because like every other liberal arts student I was seriously considering law school…) and she was fierce. There really is no other way to describe her. About 5’2, thick horn rimed glasses, a bowl cut…a bowl cut…did you hear me? A bowl cut…buzzed on the sides and everything. Wow…& her fashion sense! non existent. Green and purple sweet shirts with a monogram of an “S” for Shirley, her first name, with non matching madras style pants. Every. Day. I guess her fashion sense isn’t linked to her opinion about my Fulbright but still, I feel it plays a vital role in her existence. Okay so I’m in the room at this loooooong table surrounded by all of these professors. They had a copy of my essay in front of them. Bowly looked up from my paper, she was at the head of the table, her back to the large floor to ceiling windows in the dean’s office. So I could stare out at the clouds. Good distraction technique. So bowly looks at me and says “I just don’t see this working. I think you should apply to teach English in korea. This just won’t work.”
Crushed. Destroyed. I felt deflated and defeated. I’d spent at least a year putting together my project, perfecting my essays and my portfolio, meeting with professors at late night coffee sessions when we could fit in time to go over my work, and in a few sentences bowly made me question everything. Whatever, I smiled and nodded and told her she had the best idea. She was right! Why hadn’t I thought of that? And then…I left the office and mailed my application. Exactly the way I had planned it. And exactly the way she said it would fail. And in a way, it did. I didn’t get the Fulbright and I got a resounding, “I told you so” from the dean and the math professor and the sociology professor and bowly, of course.
But that Fulbright. Oh man, that Fulbright. I learned so much about my own art work. I could articulate things about my work that I had never even knew existed in it. I was confident in my writing skills. I had made friends with professors from other disciplines that I never dreamed would take me, a measly studio art major, seriously. My boyfriend at the time stayed up all night with me to edit my papers. I was treated to a “yay you finished!” party by my friends. Dinner and cake and good conversation at a restaurant near our beach houses. My sister called me to pat me on the back. My parents sent phone calls and e-mails and my grandma did too. So, I guess it wasn’t so much a failure when I found out the night of my solo exhibit that I wasn’t awarded the fulbright. But honestly, I always thought so until I wrote this, really. And hey, all of those people I mentioned that were happy for me that I just finished and sent the darn thing were at that solo exhibit. I guess what the Fulbright taught me, besides a lot about a really interesting country, and my own art work, and work ethic…was my support system. My friends, my “urban family” and my family. I felt them holding that old fashioned circle thing, you know the one firefighters hold if you have to jump out the window of a third story building? The one that catches you and cushions your fall? Cliché, again. I know. But still. Their trampoline holding thing made it okay for me to send that application. I could jump out that third story, no, that ten story building, and make it down happy and alive. Not to mention that I could enjoy the fall to the group knowing they were there. Despite bowly and her mismatched wardrobe and seven year old haircut…It was okay if I passed or failed. Maybe there was never a fail. Only because I’m lucky enough to have them all standing there, there was never a fail. I can actually see them all holding that trampoline thing. That’s a thing of beauty.
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