I am currently flying over the country of Botswana, into South Africa. Our flight experienced a delay on the ground, so I have been in this seat for 12 hours with still, 2 more left before we reach Cape Town. Until this moment, much of this trip has felt very surreal. The cost of my experience found 100% of its funding by outside sources including The Benjamin A. Gilman Scholarship, The CIEE Program, and my School, Fisk University’s Office of Global Initiatives. I have known I was going on this trip since May, fundamentally I had been assembling this outcome since October, and in reality, as I am sure my parents would love to reiterate, I did not actually begin to prepare for my trip until the week leading to my departure.

Going backwards, it was in October when I half-heartedly attempted an application to the Frederick Douglass Global Fellowship. A program based in London with 9 other students essentially, instilling leadership training was not necessarily a goal of mine for Summer 2019, but it was a good opportunity and a free trip, why not apply. When I later received notification that the program would re-open its application until February, I took full recognition of the second chance I had been given, and made sure to submit assemble a higher quality application, which was now due around the same time most of my other applications for summer programs would be at the dawn of the New Year.

January through February is a very stressful time for me as someone who is determined to find somewhere to live for free over the summer and earn a check, also while preparing for Graduate School. My first application was mailed in on January 29^th. After four additional applications elsewhere, the last one I would turn in was the Global Fellowship on February 14^th. These were all competitive programs, and I was not confident in my own strength as an applicant. This insecurity would manifest my Plan B wherein I formulated an itinerary to Study Abroad, should everything else fall through. I always knew I wanted to Study Abroad, however fitting it into my academic schedule and my busy summers has proven difficult. I outlined a grandiose trip, starting mid-May in Senegal, then Ghana in June and South Africa in July, I spoke of the occasion such a cross-cultural immersion would employ based upon the varied divergence in culture, region, climate, and history the countries offered. The trip would have spanned the entirety of the summer and probably come with a price tag of about $20,000.

A hopefully significant contribution to this price tag would come from The Benjamin A. Gilman Scholarship, which had a deadline around the beginning of March. I remember filling it out over the span of a few hours; it was Spring Break, a period I traditionally spend at School on our quiet campus mentally resting and preparing for the busy weeks of Spring ahead. Again, however, this was another application I was not confident in submitting. Most of my motivation for even completing the process in particular, actually resided in the fact that as someone eligible for the opportunity, I was also eligible for guaranteed additional funding from CIEE if I applied to the Gilman Scholarship Program. Lastly, I had learned through the grapevine that my school was maintaining a significant stance of generosity in helping students fund their study abroad plans, and that knowledge is what ultimately kept the complexity of my dreams alive.

Jump to the end of March, I had not heard back from any of my application submissions. Shortly thereafter though I received acceptance to the UNCF/ Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program, which has been a top priority for the summer, meaning that I would spend the month of June outside of Atlanta at Emory University. As this had been my number one goal and priority for this summer I was particularly satisfied and elated. Nevertheless, after the hype died down I recognized I still had two other months to fill, it was April, and I did not receive good news from any of the other programs I had sought entrance to.

As decisions to my many applictions would roll in, I found only two acceptances research fellowships and one cancelled the other one out. Elation is a good adjective to describe how I felt upon my admission the UNCF/Mellon Mays Undergraduate Program, but the Summer Insititute at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia would only encompass the month of June, only about 35% of my summer. With the wiggle room the rejections inspired, I had now begun to revisit my plans to study abroad.

Whenever, I tell people that studying abroad had comprised a back-up plan, I get strange looks, so I would like to qualify my situation a bit further. Before this point, it was really important that I earned an income over the summer, and that my accommodations where mostly taken care of wherever I would live because the money I earned over the summer would encompass the majority of my budget for the upcoming school year. With that in mind, Studying Abroad did not seem like much of an option for me, initially, unless those avenues of paid fellowship where entirely exhausted. Additionally, I was wholeheartedly aware that not only would I not find income in pursuing a Study Abroad opportunity, but I would also be expending an extraordinary amount of funding to make the opportunity possible, a bit of a double negative.

Though I did not get accepted into the Frederick Douglass Global Fellowship Program, because I had applied I received a grant to a Study Abroad Program of my choice in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Buenos Aries, Cape Town, Monteverde, Paris, Shanghai or the Yucatán. As a Black anglophile only one of these programs particularly appealed to me, and so I begun the process of enrolling. The month of May had come, Spring was over, the semester had long ended. With the month of June no longer available, I could only successfully accommodate one for the three summer sessions. It was in this phase that I found out my submission to the Gilman Program had actually been accepted. As my itinerary had obviously changed, I had to re-apply, in a sense, simply updating my application information, having it re-certified by staff at my university and explaining why my plans had changed. To my now burgeoning surprise, it was once again approved. In addition to this I had received additional scholarship aid from CIEE, not only for applying to the Gilman Program, but for attending a Minority Serving Institution as well. Lastly, I received a grant covering the cost of my flight. Its June, and my trip was now fully funded, the next month or so spent shuffling paperwork around my university, to the State Department, through which Gilman is operated, and the CIEE Programs office. My passport application went out and it was received within my first week with UNCF at Emory.

In all, this is why all of this has felt so surreal, so outside of my own realm of being. I often find myself preparing for things while simultaneously detaching from them mentally as not to let myself down should these things not work out in my favor. When I was packing, when my parents gave me their goodbyes, even as I waited at the three different airports for my flights to Boston, Doha, and Cape Town, full recognition of the journey I was commencing upon was not quite there, I was very much going through the motions. This opportunity is amazing and the manner in which I will receive it was a blessing that not even I could have planned for. Nevertheless, while I acknowledge this, I want to also force the recognition that along the way I found myself rejected from 4 or 5 opportunities elsewhere and attempting to figure a means to come up with funding I had not yet received. With success comes failure. Many may be aware of my summer in Atlanta and Cape Town with new found statuses as a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow and a Gilman Scholar, not so much of all the other “Thanks for your interest”s along the way. In case my point here has not yet been achieved, I just really want for anyone who reads this to understand how important it is to cast your net far and wide, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. There is not a single opportunity I have thrown my hat in for that I was sure I would receive, there are even some that I have submitted for just to practice going through the application process. Nevertheless, here we are, a few dozen moments from landing in Cape Town, South Africa, and I am finally excited.