The last nine months have been a whirlwind of work, adventure, and self-discovery. It feels odd that our Fellowship experience has come to an end because I feel that my life was practically consumed by it in one way or another for the past nine months. I think back to the spring and I remember the research assignments and preparation process very well. However, when I think back to my time in India I hit a wall.
From the day I stepped foot back in the United States I have had an incredibly difficult time recounting my experience to others as well as to myself. In India I was pushed to my personal and professional limits and I found myself in many challenging situations. As soon as I returned home I became very appreciative of how easy, both emotionally and logistically, my “normal” life is. I became very grateful for all I have and all the opportunities I have before me, but I also began to distance myself from my experience in India.
Without meaning to I have put up a wall between my life here and my life in India. When I do give myself time to reflect on my experiences in Kolkata I am overcome with emotions… feelings of frustration, happiness, homesickness, accomplishment, and everything in between. All the positive and negative experiences have become intertwined into a complicated web of stories that is practically impossible to share with other people. However, for the sake of personal reflection and vocational discernment, I’ve tried to compartmentalize my thoughts in order to pinpoint how the fellowship experience has helped me learn more about my personality as well as my professional interests and goals.
A picture taken in iMerit’s Metiabruz office in between interviews.
GSBF as a springboard to the workforce and social entrepreneurship
I feel very fortunate for the action-research I was able to do for iMerit because I think that my project truly played to my academic and professional strengths. Since Monet, Kathryn and I all had separate projects it was up to me to develop, execute and report on my research and I had a great deal of autonomy throughout the entire process. This was an ideal structure because it allowed me to work independently and focus on the aspects of the research that I found to be the most interesting and pertinent to the needs of iMerit. I found the experience of drafting a research plan, executing it, analyzing the data and reporting on the findings to be both stimulating and rewarding. I can now say with confidence that I am a self-motivated and independent worker and I now know how important it is for me to have a substantial level of autonomy in my career.
My work with the fellowship has greatly helped me understand what I need and want from a workplace environment, but even more significant is the fact that the fellowship has introduced me to new career paths and passions that will undoubtedly shape my career decisions in the coming years. I feel as if someone just spent the last 9 months pitching social entrepreneurship to me – and I bought it. I never wanted to study business because I’m disturbed by the immoral things that are done for the sake of profit… I’ve tried to steer clear of non-profit for fear of getting sucked up into an organization that doesn’t have significant impact… and I avoided the idea of working for the government because I knew the bureaucratic structure would infuriate me. For me, social enterprise presents a solution to all of these problems. It makes sense to me because it is flexible and takes the best parts of business and charity to develop innovative solutions to previously unsolvable problems.
For me to pursue any career I need to have an underlying passion as well as a plan. No, my first job out of college will not allow me to save the world. But, if I am able to connect my job to a greater goal then I will have the motivation to do my job well and contribute to the organization to the best of my ability. Although I cannot predict what my job will be or what I will be doing at the job, I hope that it will connect to my larger goal: to work at the intersection of nonprofit, for profit, social enterprise and government to achieve large systems change that makes the country (or even the world) more equitable and prosperous for all.
I love the idea of social entrepreneurship because I hate being confined to outdated ideas and ineffective protocols. Social entrepreneurship is a way to think out of the box and find new, innovative solutions to problems, making up new rules in the process. I can definitely see myself working in social entrepreneurship and I would love to work at the sector-level, rather than with just one enterprise, because I think sector- and market-wide creation is essential to the success of the field. I’m not sure what my next step is professionally but I can say with certainty that my experiences thus far with social enterprise will undoubtedly shape my career choices in the coming years.
Kathryn, Monet and I on a commute home from iMerit’s Baruipur center.
GSBF as a process of self-reflection and appreciation
Beyond the vocational discernment I have been able to do as part of the fellowship I have also learned a great deal about myself on a personal level. I believe that self-awareness is paramount to everything else I do because it allows me to develop relationships with people, work effectively, and ultimately contribute to society. I must be at peace with myself before I can be of service to others and, due to my desire to achieve this self-awareness, I have spent a great deal of time contemplating how my time in India, and my overall Fellowship experience, have changed me as a person.
When I was in India I could sense the ways in which I was learning and growing on a personal level yet I was nervous to see which of these changes would linger after I returned to life in the U.S. After being back for several months I have been able to pinpoint several small but significant changes in my personality that have held up throughout my readjustment back to life in Oregon and California. For example, I have become less neurotic and uptight, and I am no longer stressed out by small details. Before my trip to India I had a tendency to become stressed out by little things or become frustrated when things did not go as I expected. This has always been a personal fault and something I want to work on, so I am happy that I have been able to improve myself in this way.
I think I have also gained an appreciation for the differences that exist between people and cultures. I have become better at adapting to the ways other people do things and can acknowledge differences between people as an asset rather than an impediment. India is such a large and diverse country and I feel lucky that I was able to interact with people of different ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds. Despite the differences between me and each person I met, we were always able to find common ground, whether it be about school, work, our family, etc.
I could spend countless hours over analyzing how my time in India changed me, but unfortunately there is never enough time for such things. So, as I close this chapter of my life and begin new adventures, there is one specific thought that I will keep in mind: the idea of global citizenship. I went to a unique high school that taught International Baccalaureate curriculum and instills in students a feeling of global citizenship, teaching students how to “value diversity, ambiguity, and discovery and to act with responsibility, integrity, and compassion.” When I graduated from high school I thought I understood what it meant to be a global citizen, yet looking back now I don’t think I had truly grasped the concept. Even now there is still a great deal that I have to learn about the world and its people, but I think have come one step closer to understanding and appreciating the similarities and differences that exist between people and cultures. The GSB Fellowship has taught me so much in the last nine months and I hope to take the skills I have acquired and use them to continue learning for the rest of my life, no matter where I am or what I am doing.
On top of the Amber Fort in Rajasthan, India.
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