After graduation, senior Sydney Doster will travel to Nepal to serve as an English teaching assistant as part of the Fulbright Scholarship she has received for the 2013-2014 school year.
According to its website, the Fulbright Program is an international education exchange program that tries to “increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries.” The program has provided 300,000 participants, who are chosen based on academics and leadership, with opportunities to study, teach and conduct research abroad.
“The goal of it is to … share United States experience and an American aspect to other countries by teaching English,” Doster said. “I heard about it through a couple of Fulbright researchers when I was traveling in Morocco when I studied abroad.”
Doster’s passion for learning new languages and traveling is what got her interested in applying for the scholarship, and she looks forward to combining that with the opportunity to help.
“I’m looking forward to the experience of going somewhere that I’ve never been before, and meeting new people and getting to help and teach children—something that I’m really passionate about,” she said.
Although she leaves in July, Doster does not yet know where in Nepal she will be spending the eight months teaching, and said she may not even know until she gets there.
“I did preference that I wanted to be in a rural area, so hopefully I’ll be somewhere in a small little town,” she said.
This will not be her first time abroad, as she has traveled abroad to Switzerland, Spain and Peru and is fluent in two foreign languages: French and Spanish. Upon her return, she said her passion may even drive her to return abroad to continue to teach.
“I feel like (I have) almost an addiction to traveling and to other cultures; the differences of people and the similarities, as well,” she said. “I love learning new languages. I’m really passionate about it. I feel like a good way to continue that passion is to go other places, continue to learn while I can hopefully make others passionate about learning other languages, too, by teaching English.”
