As I draft this post, education and life remain disrupted by COVID-19, right now mostly due to the rapidly spreading omicron variant. The University of Rochester’s spring semester has been moved online to help slow the spread in Monroe County, where the 7-day average for new cases has continued to climb to numbers we’ve not…
Tag: Fulbright
On Disruption
Note: this was a post that I started drafting back in June 2020, but never got around to finishing. I had big plans for how to talk about the disruption of my post-Fulbright plan…but alas, there was too much work to do, and I got interrupted. There’s something meta about that! But, I’m recommitting to…
Sharing Puji’s Advice with Returning Fulbright ETAs
As we enter mid-April, and I’m ending my 4th week of sheltering in place in Central Florida to avoid contracting or carrying COVID-19, I keep seeing examples of how lessons I learned in Indonesia are applicable for navigating these challenging times. So, I thought I’d use the next couple of blog posts to explore some…
A Time of Transitions: Reentry Realities
It’s been a month since I landed back in the U.S.A. at Chicago’s O’Hare airport, smack in the midst of one of that city’s famous winter freezes, as temperatures plunged to near 0 degrees Fahrenheit. At the time, the novel coronavirus was plaguing China, and news was starting to report some spread beyond that country’s…
Writing Camp Success
Feeling Good about Our Fulbright Host Engagement Project I write this entry in a meeting room at one of my favorite resort getaways in the Semarang region, Melva Balemong, during what is one of the final writing sessions of this second week of writing camp – what I have come to affectionately call “Writing Camp…
The Results Are In!
Well, not really, but the surveys have all been entered Just today, the fabulous Master’s student who has been helping us with our research, Anjar, let me know that he’d finished entering all of the survey responses into our data management system. 618 That’s how many survey responses we have! I’m thrilled. Now the sense-making…
Connections Made in Demak
A goal of the Fulbright grant is to foster connections, and that’s certainly been a highlight of my 5 months here. And, some of my most memorable Indonesian connections originate back in the U.S. and through the University of Rochester. I’ve written elsewhere about how this grant period included an opportunity for Puji and I…
Data Collection Continues
In the last month, Puji and I, with the help of Anjar (a super-helpful student pursuing his Master’s in English Education at UNNES), have collected more than 500 survey responses from secondary students in the area. We’re learning a great deal from them about when and how they access technology, for what purposes, where they…
On Finding Flow
Through his research to discover what makes people really happy, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has come to understand the impact that finding extreme pleasure and lasting satisfaction in one’s work can have. Being in a state of flow – what he describes as the intensity, or “ecstasy,” and other worldly, out of body state that occurs “when…
Fostering a Culture of Writing
Bringing the Warner Writing Camp model to FBS to build community Last week, Puji and I, with logistical help from a committee of her colleagues and with generous financial support from AMINEF/Fulbright host engagement project funds, introduced UNNES Faculty of Languages and Arts (FBS) to the Warner Writing Camp model. Back at the University of…