Fulbright: Regresando a España

I’ve never been one for inspirational quotes. I find them tacky and usually a little bit like a false epiphany, but I have recently come to feel the meaning behind one of John Lennon’s most famous lyrics. They are words that I have seen all over Tumblr, Pinterest, and on random prints in TJ Maxx, strangely enough. In his song, “Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy),” Lennon says “Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans.” I have been able to avoid this feeling for most of my life by rigidly planning my life and always knowing the next step. But as I have found out post-college, without the structure of school really anything is a possibility.

A couple months out of college, I had applied for a Fulbright Scholarship to teach English in Spain. If you’re not familiar with it, Fulbright is a scholarship program founded by Senator J. William Fulbright in 1946 to help the United States and other counties exchange knowledge, skills, and culture through research and teaching. I am proud to say that 59 Fulbright participants have gone on to win Nobel Prizes, 82 have won the Pulitzer Prize, and 10 have served in Congress.

With numbers like these, I knew the process was going to be competitive. I knew it was up there with the hardest things I had ever applied to. Possibly the only thing more selective was an internship I had applied to with National Geographic for which I was obviously not selected from 13,000 applicants for one spot (yikes!).

The application process was vigorous. I wrote two essays—one personal statement and another focusing on why I wanted to serve in Spain. I completed a formal assessment of my Spanish skills with a professor. I completed numerous short answers, and I had a Skype interview with two professors of different disciplines who had stake in the program.

I was not confident that I would even make it past the first round, but in January 2017 I found out that I had. At that point, I knew from my Fulbright research that my chance of being chosen was about 50/50. I knew I should have been proud to make it even to this stage, but I was devastated when I was listed as an alternate in the final round. They told me that I would be notified by September (the official start month) if I were to be called from the alternate pool.

May, June, July, and August went by. I made other plans. I accepted another AmeriCorps position in Seattle, and I even moved out there. September went by, and I knew that my chance was gone. I didn’t have to stamina to apply again, so I figured that I would apply in a couple years or apply for another, less competitive teach abroad program.

Meanwhile, I started my job in Seattle, and I was miserable. I was halfway across the country, working alone most days, and I was starting to realize that I had taken the job simply to have something. I was terrified of being without my next move. The job wasn’t right, but the thought of quitting made me sick. I already had an apartment. I’d signed paperwork, and I didn’t want to leave the organization hanging. But my mental health was deteriorating, and I didn’t want to spend 10 months of my next term miserable and just as confused at the end as I had been at the start.

I am embarrassed of this “failure,” that I couldn’t cut it and came home. But I want to tell the truth on this blog, because I know that my depression and anxiety is often triggered by seeing snippets of people’s seemingly perfect lives on social media. I am not saying that all of these people are pretending, but I am sure many of them are. I understand the desire to portray a certain image online, but it is often harmful. I want to serve as an example of someone who is NOT perfect, has failures and struggles, but still tries to her best. That is what I think we should be celebrating, and that is what I wish I saw more online. So here I am. I also want to clarify that just because you quit something to take care of your mental health does NOT mean that you are a failure. It does NOT mean you are flaky or lazy. It just means that you are practicing conscious self-care.

I decided to quit and come home. If you’re reading this and you know me, you know that I am not a quitter, so much so that it is often a detriment to myself. I will continue with something I hate for probably ten times as long as the average person. I had no job lined up, no income, and no plan. I was the most insecure I had been in years, but I slowly started to warm up to the idea of starting my career, getting my own place, and possibly adopting a cat (which is most definitely a 2018 goal). I was starting to get comfortable and make new plans, albeit tentative ones.

Then one morning my mom and I were headed to my grandma’s for church and a movie. I checked my phone as I do most mornings when I wake up, and I saw an email from Fulbright. I didn’t think much of it. They periodically would send emails encouraging alternates to reapply or consider other countries. But I opened it, and there it was. An email offering me a spot in Fulbright.

Someone had dropped out, just as I had dropped out of my job. They almost never take alternates that late, but apparently the school really needed an English Teaching Assistant this year. The position was to teach preschool—4^th grade students in the La Rioja region of Spain, about four hours north of Madrid. I would live in Logroño with 20-some other Fulbright teachers.

I told myself that I would think about it for a day before responding, but after only a couple hours I found myself typing out my response to accept the position. It only took another couple hours before the anxiety started again. If there’s one thing I’ve learned it is that even if things are going exactly as you planned or hoped, anxiety doesn’t go away. After Seattle, I was afraid to make a big change, and I could have seen myself getting a little too comfortable at home. I’m trying to tell myself that it’s a good thing that I’m getting back up on the horse.

Leaving for Fulbright

I leave today. In fact, I am writing this from the terminal. I am beyond excited to be going back to Spain. I am planning to travel to Scandinavia, Italy, and Croatia, plus dozens of places in Spain. I am going to eat my favorite Spanish foods like pisto and jamón serrano and drink tinto de verano. But I am still anxious enough to have taken my anxiety meds before this flight, and I brought my coloring book to give myself something to focus on besides all the unknowns. So just know that while it might seem glamorous to be jetting off to Spain for Fulbright, it’s still scary and it’s not just what you see on my Instagram.