Next year, senior Johanna Leader hopes to be watching Frisbee in Prague and Sweden. Senior  Nadim Damluji hopes to be talking to Tintin-ologists in France. Senior Seth Bergeson hopes to be watching children play in Africa. And senior Lani Rosenthal hopes to be in Swaziland looking at a community-based organization that uses local food to support humanitarian efforts.
The four students are the Whitman nominees for the Watson Fellowship, which would enable them to travel for a year completing projects crafted around a personal passion. Having successfully advanced to being the final Whitman nominees, they recently completed their interviews with Cleveland Johnson, director of the Watson Fellowship.
“The interview was great,” said Leader. “A lot of the questions were aimed at trying to decipher my character and experiences that have shaped me as a person, both related and unrelated to Ultimate. We talked a lot about the values I’ve learned from team sports and the specific values of sportsmanship and diplomacy that I’ve learned through playing Ultimate. I think this form of questioning fits in with the motto of the Watson, which is ‘we invest in people, not projects.'”
“The Watson is a one-year fellowship in which fellows receive a grant for independent study and travel outside the United States awarded to graduating college seniors nominated by participating institutions,” according to its Web site.
Keith Raether, Director of Fellowships and Grants at Whitman, has his own definition of the fellowship.
“It’s a year of examining, testing, stretching and discovering layers of yourself as you’re experiencing the world completely and independently,” he said.
For Damluji, the Watson offered him the chance to merge a personal interest with his political studies done at Whitman. His proposal focused on the study of Tintin, a popular comic book figure that he would examine as a text that is both beloved in many cultures but also Orientalist.
“When I first heard about the Watson, it was about something you are passionate about but didn’t get to study in college. [Tintin] is the perfect thing: influenced from a time before Whitman that incorporates my Whitman education,” said Damluji.
Like Damluji, Leader’s proposal incorporates both her Whitman education and her passions outside the classroom.
“I was at the [Ultimate Frisbee] World Champ games in Vancouver BC, and I’d heard about the Watson, and I was was impressed with how sportsmanly and competitive it was at an elite level,” she said.
This inspired her to apply for the Watson with a proposal based on how the spirit of Ultimate Frisbee functions through gender relations and self-officiation around the world.
For Raether, these proposals embody what the Watson is about.
“It’s all about self-awareness and self-exploration,” he said of the process.
The Watson requires that recipients travel for an entire year outside the United States while completing their projects. Damluji plans to trace the character Tintin’s travels around the globe, while Leader hopes to study Frisbee in places like Japan, Australia and Venezuela.
For now, the nominees must wait until March to hear back from the Watson committee. Even if Leader doesn’t get it, she says the process has been well worth it.
“It’s highly competitive, but whether or not I make it it’s been incredibly introspective and enlightening. It’s not just about the project but about how the project represents you,” she said.
