What motivated you to apply for a fellowship?

I was interested in studying in England and when I was doing some initial research into fellowships, I found a program that specifically fit my interests and I started to learn that the area of study I was interested in was specific to the UK. It was kind of an accident that I found all this information, but that really motivated me to then try to apply. It was mostly because I was spending a lot of time thinking about what I wanted to do after graduation and so the process of kind of researching the fellowship and then looking into ways to apply brought me to where I applied. 

What advice would you give to students considering applying for fellowships in the future?

Trying to get to the core of what’s important to you and really thinking about what contribution you want to make after graduation. I feel like when we apply to some things we tend to apply with the short sighted, we want to do this because it would be cool or because it’d be a good opportunity, help us get where we want to go. That’s of course important, but for this kind of application, that’s frankly quite unlikely to actually come through to anything. Being able to feel like I was working towards something that was bigger and more apart of my future. The kind of thinking and work that I needed to be doing anyway at this point in my life, was really helpful in making it feel like no matter what came of this application, I’ve gained something and I’ll be better for doing this process.