setting the stage
For as long as I can remember, I’ve defined myself by two major metrics: where I’m at and where I’m going.
Today, I’ll tell you where I’m at. But for the first time in a while, even I couldn’t tell you where I’m going quite yet.
Growing up, I lived all across the US before I’d even graduated high school thanks to my father’s job. It made social life difficult at times, but I wouldn’t have traded it for anything. Every move changed me and gave me a concrete window of time in which to categorize and chronicle my growth as a person.
After graduating high school, I knew I wanted to leave the state for college; when I earned a scholarship at a school in a brand-new city, I couldn’t say no. Three and a half years later, I’d spent summers interning in two more new states. All in all, I’ve visited over 30 US states and called seven home, and I’m always itching for more periods of growth and changes of scenery.
I recently graduated with a dual undergraduate degree in public relations and Spanish, and I’ve got a wide variety of experience in journalism, sports communications, and broadcasting. There are a lot of new states I could move to in order to start a career. For the next 10 months, though, I’m leaving just about all of that behind as I embark on a different type of move. I’m spending 10 months in Bolivia and Peru on a Fulbright grant, marrying research, study, and service to create a year of cultural exchange.
During my time in the Andean region, I’ll focus my efforts on indigenous culture in hopes of developing repeatable strategies for using communications as a tool for economic growth and capacitation development in underserved communities across the world. It’s a big task, one that I’ve never seen done before. But whether it works how I intend it to or not, I’m confident it’ll be one of the biggest windows of growth I’ve ever experienced.
So then, the blog content to follow over the next 10 months will be more than detailing my work and my research. It’ll be more than explaining how I navigate living abroad in a post-COVID era, or find ways to plan around potential civil unrest in both countries I’ll live in. It’ll also be more than a guide to using communications for altruistic purposes, although it’ll have significant bases in all three topics.
What you’ll read, listen to, or see here in 2023 will really be about growth. It’ll answer the question of where I’m going and display publicly the process of going from here to there, wherever that may be. My hope is that witnessing my growth can inspire and lead you to grow yourself and others, too.
Next time, I’ll take you through my first week in-country and describe the highs, lows, and in-betweens of the unmatched moments that kick off a life landmark.
Until then, thanks for growing alongside me and feel free to contact me at dkotula.fulbright@gmail.com if you’d like to chat about my grant!
Blessings,
Danny
