In less than 10 hours I begin my journey to Spain where I will be living for 4 months. Let me start by giving some back ground into how this amazing opportunity came about.

This past spring I had the great pleasure of having Professor Gilley as my Spanish I teacher. Mrs. Gilley is one of those gifted teachers that makes an hour and half class seem like 20 minutes. Every Tue & Thurs. when I left her class I felt like I had learned a little more and understood what I did know a little better, all with out feeling like work. In May, Prof. Gilley announced to the class that a new scholarship had been created for Broward Community College students and it provided students with an opportunity to study in Seville, Spain. After class I spoke with Mrs. Gilley to get some more details.

I found the William E. Greene study abroad scholarship to be extremely unique. First of all, the study abroad would be during the Fall semester which goes from Sept 5th until Dec. 15th.  Secondly, the scholarship paid for everything: 15 credit hours, books, room, excursions, and airfare. Finally, this amazing experience would be given not to just one student but five. I had not heard of any other scholarships like this one. So, needless to say this opportunity grabbed my attention.

With my interest peaked the only thing on my mind was can I do this. I had to consider wether this was financially feasible. I also wondered about my ability to create two essays that could put me into contention for this program. Amy, my girlfriend of seven years, told me that I had to at least try for this study abroad scholarship because this was a truly once in a lifetime opportunity. After some nudging from Amy I finally committed myself to earning one of the William E. Greene scholarships.

The next step was working on the essays. The two topics for the essays were "Globalization' and "How would a semester abroad change you." After completing the essays the Internationals Studies committee would read them over and choose the top writers to come back for a face-to-face interviews. After two long weeks I had my essays. The first was Globalization: Changing Community Health around the World and Study Abroad: The Evolution of a Student. With my essays completed and submitted for review I had the wonderful experience of waiting to hear from the committee.

 

The waiting experience was awful. I kept trying to tell myself I did not care but it was a lie. After pouring so much time and energy into my essays and the outstanding reward that could be mine, it was hopeless not to be anxious. Fortunately, these two weeks would fly by as fast as the two weeks leading up to Christmas when I was 10 years old. My present for enduring such hardship was a call from Dr. Moore, the head of the Internationals Studies department, to come in the next week for my interview.

The waiting experience can get worse. I thought I understood the anguish of waiting while waiting to hear if my essays were good enough, but let me tell you that is nothing compared to the wait of going to sit in front of a seven person committee for an oral interview. I was lucky and only had to wait a week this time. It was a long week but in the end it was all worth.

The interviews went well and a few days later they notified everyone on wether or not they made it or not. Obviously I was one of the five students to get a chance of a life time because if not this blog would not be very interesting.

My plan for while I am in Spain is to post a weekly blog on my experiences, insights, and thoughts. I have not ever really ever been out of the country. I say not really because I did go to Mexico this year but I spent the majority of my time in a resort so there was no emersion into another culture like this going to provide. This first time experience should make for some good writing. 

Adios, 

Brent

P.S. For you Spanish speaking people reading this I know there should be an accent in adios, but I can not figure out how to get it to work on my new laptop. I want thank Professor Gilley for getting me interested in Spanish and for the travel tips. I also want to thank Amy for the encouragement and support to pursue my dreams.