It's pretty disorienting being the disaffected graduate student in a room full of over-achieving recent college grads. That is, however, what the past few sessions of the Fulbright orientation have felt like.
There are around 130 Fulbrighters in Spain and Andorra this year, which is almost double last years' total. There are about 30 graduate students, and the rest are all English Teaching Assistants (who tend to be fresh out of college).
Another girl from my department, N, and I both won Fulbright Awards this year, and though we didn't request it, we got placed together for the hotel stay at orientation. So we've spent the afternoon joking about how strange it feels to go to sessions about living in Madrid (when we've spent so much time here already over our grad school careers), and about how weird it is to explain our project goals for the year (when our goals are simply to finish our dissertation project).
Also, it's very loud. 130 people in one room gets noisy, especially when they've drunk their ONE allotted glass of wine. (Yes, they only gave us one glass of wine. C'mon people! We're in Spain. Two is the minimum!)
There are around 130 Fulbrighters in Spain and Andorra this year, which is almost double last years' total. There are about 30 graduate students, and the rest are all English Teaching Assistants (who tend to be fresh out of college).
Another girl from my department, N, and I both won Fulbright Awards this year, and though we didn't request it, we got placed together for the hotel stay at orientation. So we've spent the afternoon joking about how strange it feels to go to sessions about living in Madrid (when we've spent so much time here already over our grad school careers), and about how weird it is to explain our project goals for the year (when our goals are simply to finish our dissertation project).
Also, it's very loud. 130 people in one room gets noisy, especially when they've drunk their ONE allotted glass of wine. (Yes, they only gave us one glass of wine. C'mon people! We're in Spain. Two is the minimum!)
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