Tisch Global Jumbos – Page 27 – The Blog of the Tisch College Global Programs

April 12, 2021April 14, 2021

Looking Back, Would You Do it Again? Q&A with Civic Semester Alum Claire!

1. What was your Civic Semester experience? As a rising junior, how if at all has Civic Semester impacted your Tufts experience beyond your time in the program?

Absolutely positive! Just the idea that I’m writing about how awesome this program was already excites me. I’m not saying this in an exaggerated way: Tufts Civic Semester was a life-changing experience. I had very little idea about what civic action really entails until I gained hands-on experience in Peru where I had the amazing opportunity to work at a non-profit organization that provides physical therapy services and mental health counseling to disabled patients – an underrepresented and often disregarded group of individuals in the country. Beyond my time in the program, I always find myself engaging in rigorous self-reflection processes about civic action that have become an integral part of my life. As for my future career path, I am looking for opportunities that will allow me to engage in some level of civic work and social activism, likely international non-profit organizations.

2. How did the Civic Semester impact your Tufts education so far? Do you see any impact on your academic path, extracurricular involvements, peer group, or other areas of your life?

Definitely! Fun fact: I was seriously thinking of giving up learning Spanish after four years of studying this language in high school until I was selected as a participant of the Civic Semester program. I created so many meaningful moments in Peru and I would very much love to keep in touch with my friends there by perfecting my Spanish speaking skills. As a result, I have decided to pursue a minor in Spanish! Another fun fact: I think all my Spanish professors are quite familiar with my participation in the Tufts Civic Semester Peru program by now because of the frequency I write about this experience in analytical papers, short stories and poems. Although I plan to pursue a double major in International Relations and Sociology, I have seen myself adopting various aspects of Civic Studies in my interested research areas. Outside of classes, I have been involved with social impact groups in Beijing and New York, but I hope to return to the Tisch College and be more active there in the future!

3. What was it like coming back to campus for the spring semester? What advice would you give to future Civic Semester students about this adjustment?

I had a pretty smooth transition back to the campus. Along with the rest of the Peru cohort, we attended a lot of school activities and applied to a number of on-campus opportunities. It was not difficult making new friends in class because most of the time your fellow classmates didn’t really know each other either 🙂 Clubs are also a great way to get to know new people. Based on my own experience, I would say that actively pursuing an abundance of opportunities (academic and extracurricular) on campus is a great way to reconnect with Tufts. However, it is also important to balance work time with rest time so you are not stressing yourself out during this first semester on campus.

4. Looking back, would you do it again? What overall advice do you have for students considering the program?

Of course – 100%! My family and close friends all know that I can never stop talking about my experience in Peru. I would like to tell future students that it is totally normal to feel uncertain and scared about leaving home and traveling to a new place. I was too. I had so many concerns about going to Peru: Am I able to use Spanish to effectively communicate with the locals? Can I get along with my host family? Will I suffer from high altitude sickness all the time? But everything turned out to be an absolutely rewarding experience. I realized that language is never the only thing in the world that connects you with people who share your interests and passion (I didn’t really understand 1/3 of the things my mentor said to me but we managed to be great friends through our shared love for singing). I also realized that some physical and emotional discomfort from time to time has made me a much stronger and open-minded person than I ever was before. I left my home country to live and study in different countries since I was 14 years old, but none of my abroad experience is comparable to this Civic Semester experience that exposed me to another way of living my life that I had never imagined before.

May 18, 2020April 1, 2021

Three Lessons in Self Love

by Silas, Tufts 1+4 Participant

With the biting Vermont breeze a refreshing reminder of where I ended up after a week of mild chaos, I finally began to reflect on my time in Uruguay. As my dog ran ahead of me, I remembered some of the highlights of the year, laughing to myself, thinking of all the crazy things that had happened. I then found myself getting a little more philosophical, as I tend to do on my walks. I tried to piece together who Silas is after the experience and how he compares to Silas before the experience. Through lots of reflection, I realized how little self love I had prior to beginning my gap year. But that all changed in Uruguay. On my walk a few days upon arriving home, I tried to narrow down what catalyzed this change and I came up with three

1. Space for Reflection

When was the last time you tried to be completely alone with your thoughts?

I began to reflect at our orientation week at Tufts when Professor Talusan told us journaling would be an essential part of our class. Originally dismissing it as a useless formality, I grew to recognize the importance of devoting time to reflection as it was reiterated through activities and workshops. On our final night, our peer leaders, Daniela and Mateo, led us in a sharing circle, where for the first time, I worked to identify what drove me to take the gap year. This allowed me to know what I wanted to work on over the course of the year and gave me a way to gauge my progress. During the first few months of being in-country, I journaled nearly every day. Those daily 5-10 minutes helped me deconstruct what I felt that day, which especially helped through a period of intense homesickness. I obviously had felt sad, or angry, or scared, etc. before in my life, but I rarely gave myself the space to unpack it. In trying to keep up an always positive, happy facade I would not work on or even validate those feelings, instead convincing myself everything was fine, remaining ignorant of my own emotions. During the year, I devoted time to listen to myself instead, whether through journaling, meditation, or simply taking a walk. In the wake of being robbed, reflecting on those emotions helped me to not panic anytime a beggar asked me for change. During bouts of homesickness, reflecting helped me be more open and honest about how I felt, recognizing the sadness as a real and valid emotion. Giving myself the space to reflect has made me feel less like the product of other people’s expectations and opinions, as those are no longer the only feelings I listen to.

2. People

Who in your life do you feel you can be completely yourself around?

I’ve told friends I love them before and it has been true, but never has it held so much meaning as saying it to other gap participants on our last night. The end had come much sooner than we expected so these final moments made us reflect on our time spent together. Going through this experience with people was very powerful, as we were learning so much about ourselves, together. A friend once told me “It’s hard to change when the people around you are just gonna classify or treat you like the person they are comfortable knowing you as.” We, however, were all comfortable with each other while growing, so we were unafraid to show that development. What resulted was friendship based purely on love for who we were. Unlike some previous friendships in my life, there was little fear of judgment, meaning that as I learned so much about myself, I was able to show it wholeheartedly. Being vulnerable, and still valued by amazing people helped me value myself more.

3. Hell yeah, I just did that!

Do you know when you’re crushing it?

I’ve always had trouble recognizing and talking about my accomplishments because I don’t want to seem like an egotistical person. Not talking about them also meant I did not celebrate them myself. However, in Uruguay, I realized it was healthy to recognize accomplishments, no matter how small. Earlier in the year, I wrote about how I had discovered the most gratifying parts of life to be the small victories. Focusing on these little moments day to day helped me through some of the toughest times in Uruguay because even when all I wanted was to go home, I thought of the short conversations at work, the memorable nights with friends, the walks exploring the city, and I was reminded of the life I was building there. When we heard we would be leaving the program early, I was devastated, which surprised me, after spending so much of the year thinking about home. However, I had built a vibrant life on a different continent with all new people, in a language I couldn’t speak well before. That’s pretty amazing. I took initiative in getting to know the city, building a healthy routine, becoming an important member of my internship. Part of my journey to self-love was realizing that so much of the success of the year could be attributed to my own actions.

Perhaps the greatest lesson from the year is realizing the importance of growth. Through learning self-love, I grew into myself. On the first night of our Bridge Year orientation, another fellow asked me why I decided to do this. “I don’t know,” I said. “I just know something has to fundamentally change in my life.” I knew I was looking for something, but I didn’t know what. During the year, I found what I had lost: myself. Before the trip, I felt I had lost parts of what made me myself, or at least I failed to value them. The journey of self-love is certainly not over and neither is the journey of growth. All of life is an opportunity to grow and I hope to never stop.

A photo from our very special final night in Uruguay. Taken by Liani Astacio 03.14.2020

May 18, 2020April 1, 2021

Coming Full Circle

by Giovana, Tufts 1+4 Participant

I walked into my neighborhood’s TATA (a supermarket chain in Uruguay) on the morning of my two-month early departure, due to the pandemic, to buy some Uruguayan essentials: dulce de leche, yerba, y membrillo. As I entered the store my attention was immediately drawn to the song playing on the overhead speakers. I started singing along in my head, “Caballero… Recuerde que el amor es lo primero.” My mind drew the connection instantaneously that the song playing was “Alegre Caballero” by Rubén Rada.

Before this year, I had only come to Uruguay once 5 years ago with my sister and dad, and we had listened to that song on repeat because it was the only CD in my Uncle’s car. I stopped in the middle of the aisle and allowed myself to embrace all of the nostalgia in that moment. It felt as though it was this perfect paradox: Where the in-country exploration of my Uruguayan culture/heritage had begun and ended.

I had always felt that I was lacking a personal connection to the country, preventing me from claiming my “Uruguayanness.” It had always been a place of relevance but one I couldn’t fully grasp. Both my parents would talk about how our culture and their experiences living there influenced them deeply but without further explanation. Beginning this bridge-year, I had this expectation that I would leave fully feeling confident to claim my Uruguayan identity yet it became so much more than that.

In October I met two people who became my closest Uruguayan friends throughout my bridge-year: Marcelo and Agustina. They both allowed me to connect intimately to Uruguay as a country, by being a platform to meet more local youth and subsequently deepening my connection to the language. The more time I spent with each of them the more I learned. Sometimes Marcelo would say things like “manzana” (apple) accompanied by a hand gesture, and claimed he was teaching a very slang version of Uruguayan Spanish. He advised me to never use it in a formal context, which eventually became an ongoing joke that I would later tease him about in the months following. Agustina would always invite me to cool “underground events” which allowed me to uncover deeply the city of Montevideo and take advantage of everything it had to offer. These friendships created a foundation and a tangible connection to Uruguay. Such experiences allowed me to construct a Uruguayan life of my own, independent from that of my family.

Once I had that foundation and felt increasingly comfortable in the life I was constructing for myself, I began to understand my own upbringing better and the references my parents would make. I can picture my dad taking a bus from the countryside into Montevideo to sell fresh fruits and vegetables in the local ferias on the weekend. I can picture my mother at her boarding school, looking out her window into her ocean view. It’s simply being in the country and picking up the customs, and hearing the day-to-day noises in the environment that brings more awareness and understanding of my roots.

After spending 7 months in Uruguay, I realized I grew up more “Americanized” than I thought and learned to embrace being a yankee (gringa), or as some of my friends called me, “Uruguaya-yanki.” Before this year, I would’ve gotten defensive about being called these names and would’ve felt invalidated of my identity but instead, to my surprise, this year taught me how to embrace it. While it still may take time to fully embrace myself as a Uruguayan-American, I left making a home of my own, feeling more connected to my roots, and confronting parts of my identity that used to make me insecure. There is so much more reflection about my experience that I anticipate having and unpacking throughout the next few months and beyond, but I feel more confident than ever of who I am. The song Alegre Caballero” by Rubén Rada, will forever be an ironic symbol making my own identity out of a collective one and mark a place of my own in Uruguay.

3/15/20: With Agustina and Marcelo on my last night in Uruguay.

May 18, 2020April 1, 2021

Disfrutar La Vida, Paso a Paso

by Christopher, Tufts 1+4 Participant

I laid on my bed in the humid hostel room as the dry bed sheets stuck onto my sweaty back. The whole room reeked of body odor from the day-old damp bathing suits hanging on the towel rack in the bathroom and some hidden in plastic bags. Two of my friends came back from their beach run with their sandy feat and were laughing in unison as the white floors became muddy. I was getting frustrated by these small annoyances, so I silently slipped out of the cramped hostel room while the four of my friends applied their sunscreen. I started walking on the Olón Beach to escape all the chaos and to let my mind breathe. Ten minutes into the walk, I closed my eyes and started walking, something that I do sometimes in my neighborhood in Tokyo out of boredom when I’m walking home from various places, but I often fail to walk even a block without opening my eyes out of a fear of hitting a pole or running into a bush. It’s a kind of test for me to see how straight and far I can walk before I become afraid of running into something. But on this beach, I was free. I checked the view before I closed my eyes again, and no one was present for a mile or two. However, the moment I closed my eyes, the liberating feeling that I enjoyed just moments ago was overtaken by fear. I felt blind, and I didn’t know where I was going.

Fear clouded my mind momentarily, but as I continued to walk, it was replaced by a sense of thrill for this challenge. I began to think about the physical senses that I could use to guide me toward the other side of the beach. So after I took a few deep breaths, I tuned into the sensations of my body. The warm and soft wave wrapped my ankle, and I felt the moisture in the sand; I was somewhat close to the water, and I was going in the right direction. A few minutes later, I realized that the waves weren’t hitting my ankles anymore; however, my feet were still feeling the moist sand. So I took a few diagonal steps to the left: one, two, three, four. My toes felt the lukewarm baby waves wading back into the ocean.

I eventually had to reopen my eyes after what seemed like hours, but realized that I probably only walked for half a mile. It was interesting how different the experience was to complete one mile while closing my eyes from a normal walk, because during my blind walk, every step mattered. The same mile contained steps with a totally different purpose and beauty to it. As I continued the walk towards the other side of the beach, I thought about this metaphor. I didn’t know far the end of the beach was and I couldn’t see if there were any obstacles in my path, but I learned to cherish the beautiful moment-by-moment sensations of the baby waves brushing my ankles, the warm and moist sand, and the rustling sound of the waves going back home. Just like on this blind walk on the Olón beach, my future is full of unknowns and sometimes my mind gets clouded by the sense of fear and the lack of direction. However, deriving anxiety from the future–something that I cannot fully predict or control—and letting it influence my present situation is pointless. Focusing on the one step ahead of me—no matter how blurry life may seem—will give me the strength and the courage to achieve it. So enjoy life, step by step. Disfrutar la vida, paso a paso.

May 14, 2020April 1, 2021

O Caminhão Que Vem

by Seneca, Tufts 1+4 Participant

I met a host of incredible people during my year abroad. Strangers who welcomed me – a foreigner with no voice or connection to the local community — with open arms into their homes and their lives. These people shared so much with me, more than I could ever recount in a blog post, but one lesson stuck with me more than the rest: that there’s no singular path, no one way to go about life. Now this lesson is applicable on many levels, part of the reason why it has resonated with me so much. It applies to a single decision, an opportunity, or musings about the more distant future.

The first person who helped me learn this lesson was a Russian friend names Yana who I met at my apprenticeship in Brazil. She had recently finished four years of university in China, and was traveling throughout Latin America, picking up work from place to place as she taught online English classes and saught to learn the native languages. I really admired this lifestyle, as hectic as it appeared. She had left behind everything familiar to her, and was just playing things by ear, living day to day. We love to romanticize the idea of truly living in the moment, and in my eyes she embodied that ideal more than anyone I had ever met.

The second person to help teach me this lesson was my host father, Giulianno. He had never felt particularly comfortable in a traditional academic setting, and did not finish college. In the community I had grown up in, this was unheard of. I thought that only geniuses like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates could drop out of college and live a satisfying and enriching life. But no, Giulianno is one of the most genuinely content, comfortable people I’ve ever met. He does mainly mechanical work and takes care of the house, while my host mom logs long hours at a beauty parlor.

I also found these qualities in my grandfather. I only recently took the initiative to delve more into his past. He was a member of the Merchant Marines and traveled the world on merchant vessels for the beginning of his post-undergraduate life. He attended Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, and the financial burden he avoided with this free education allowed him to be considerably more flexible afterwards.

As I pass this piece of writing off to my mom for her thoughts, I can only imagine what is going through her mind. No mom, this doesn’t mean that I want to travel the world without a real job, that I want to drop out of college and do mechanical work, that I want to join the military and travel on merchant ships. But it is relieving for me to know that these options are out there. It gives me a real peace of mind in our society, which puts far too much pressure on far too young people to be certain about their futures. I don’t consider everyone’s story as a real possibility for myself, but as I meet more people and learn of their unique paths, it helps to quell the anxiety I feel about my own future, knowing that there are ample routes.

My grandfather, Richard Petry, in the summer of 2015. Pictured here with a Mahi Mahi. He has always carried his passion of fishing and the sea throughout his endeavors. Photo taken by my father.

May 11, 2020April 1, 2021

Quantifying an Experience

by Madeleine, Tufts 1+4 Participant

Since coming home to Maine, I’ve been asked “How was Uruguay?” a million times. I hear it from neighbors, friends, and relatives, all meaning the best, but not understanding that I still don’t know how to answer. I know what everyone wants to hear:

“It was amazing! My host family and internship were awesome, and I made so many friends and saw such cool places!”

This is the response I first used and, to be fair, it’s all true. But it’s hard for me to group so many memories, conversations, adventures, and emotions into a sentence like that. You can’t know a book without reading the whole story, and obviously, a one-sentence summary does not suffice.

Being asked this question and never knowing how to respond made me wonder how I would measure the seven months. Meaning, answering “How was Uruguay?” not to an outside party, but only to myself. My first instinct was to take tangible parts of my experience, assign value based on how many times they occurred, and in this way, determine significance. The most significant things would be what I could measure my year with. I soon realized that I was basically rewriting “Seasons of Love” from Rent ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvyHuse6buY). The song brings up a good point- it’s surprisingly hard to take such a concrete amount of time and define it by something else. I could define it more generally by how many bus rides I took, how many times I traveled, how many friendships I made, how many sunsets I watched. I thought that those would be great, universally understandable and beautiful memories, but they lacked a certain emotional value. Using these experiences to quantify my time didn’t feel complete- it was too general, too normal, and left out too much.

Then, I began thinking of ways to incorporate that personal side that I felt was missing. I could use dozens of personal ways to quantify my time with memories specific to my friends, family, and internship. However, I realized that these experiences, though meaningful to me, were too specific to quantify in a general statement. I think they will hold more value in a journal entry for myself than in a blog post, or in my short answer about my experience abroad.

I came to the conclusion that I could not use numbers to determine significance. I had more general experiences that were vast in amount, and I had specific experiences that were too isolated, too small, and therefore, I couldn’t possibly group them together. Throwing numbers out of the equation, but still thinking about significance, I found a solution. The answer was to quantify my experience with concepts- things like beauty, joy, and love. I found that using such concepts as a way to quantify my experience to answer that question adequately incorporated the complexity of my time in Uruguay, as well as simplified my answer to be appropriately short for the prompt. These feelings were present in every experience I could describe as general, as well as every isolated moment. All of them were so present in my seven months, yet all numerically unquantifiable. When I think of my time in Uruguay, there is beauty, there is joy, and Rent was definitely onto something, because there is, most importantly, love. The most significant part of my experience was that I grew love for my family, my internship, my friends, the city, my home, the language, and myself.

And now, I ask myself, “Maddie, how was Uruguay?”

“There was beauty in every moment, and my days were filled with love- I will be forever grateful.”