Fulbright advice (Part II)

Ok, so this is the second part of my Fulbright advice (if you missed it, Part I is here).

6. Know your audience

If you want the panel/reviewers to want to give you the award, you need your application to be memorable. Vague and uninformed proposals stand a lower chance of being selected, so it’s particularly important to make sure that your project is clear and understandable to people outside your field. This means avoiding jargon, specialist terms, and technical vocabulary. This is one easy way of alienating the very people you want to impress.

7. Why the USA?

You also need to make a strong case for ‘why do you need to go to the States?’. Saying that you want to work on your tan in the Arizona desert is unlikely to garner support, so be clear on who you want to work with and why. What will the benefits be to you and your career if you go to the States as opposed to anywhere else? And what do you hope to bring back to the UK? The Fulbright is an exchange programme, so it’s important to flag up how the UK will benefit from this exchange.

8. Leading from the front

The Fulbright is also about developing the leaders of the future, people who will move fields forward, who will inspire and help people. As such, Fulbrighters  are generally excellent ambassadors, not only for their country, but for the Fulbright Commission as well. People who are interested in the world around them, who are curious about new cultures and excited about meeting new people have the kinds of qualities the Fulbright represents. Your application and the interview are both avenues where you can showcase these qualities to the reviewing panel, so don’t be backwards in going forwards on the kinds of things you’ve achieved. Additionally, even once your Fulbright year is done, it’s a lifetime commitment of representing the Fulbright ethos. Once a Fulbrighter, always a Fulbrighter!

9. The interpersonal stuff

The Fulbright is a commitment. It took me almost two years from start to finish, and for me, having support from friends and family was really important in getting through the process. But additionally, if you’re in a relationship, moving abroad for anywhere between three months to three years is a big ask. Unless you’re happy to spend some of that time apart (since if you travel on the visa waiver program, visits to the US can only be a maximum of 90 days), it’s important to make sure your significant other is on board. If you’re married, you have a better deal in that Fulbright will sponsor J2 visas for dependents (for your spouse and kids), but if you’re in a relationship and not married, things get a bit more complicated, since unmarried partners can’t be sponsored for J2 visas. In this situation, B2 visas for cohabiting partners are usually the solution, although you’re always advised to seek independent visa advice on this (don’t phone the US embassy though, they’re generally not able to advise on these kinds of things). Seriously, I could write a whole blog post just about visas…

10. Do it

The process is long, arduous, and difficult, and even if you get awarded it, there are another bunch of hoops that need to be cleared (visas, medical, more paperwork). Saying that though, it is probably one of the most worthwhile things I have ever done (or rather, am doing) and I wouldn’t change anything. I have met some incredibly interesting people, I get to experience a whole different culture, and I get to bring all of these experiences back with me and share them with friends, family, and colleagues in the UK. I’m a big believer in cultural exchange, and I think it’s one of the most powerful ways we can get to appreciate each others’ points of view and see where other people are coming from. The Fulbright is a wonderful opportunity, so go for it!

– The Social Linguist

Three months already??

I can barely believe it, but it’s already been three months since we landed in Pittsburgh, so nearly a quarter of my Fulbright year has passed (some Fulbrighters are even getting ready to fly back home now!). I’m not sure quite where the time is going, but it seems to be some sinister plan to motivate me to get some work done before I head back to Birmingham. The quicker time passes, the harder I (‘m supposed to) work. Or something like that.

In any event, I figured that it would be helpful to make a post on what to expect when applying for a Fulbright, some hints and tips that I found helpful, and to pass on some of my ‘wisdom’ (such as it is) to anyone embarking on this road (you can also check out Mutual Understanding for the collective wisdom of this year’s Fulbright cohort).

1. Plan ahead

When I decided to start applying for the Fulbright, the deadline was in May and I found out about it in March. Not a great amount of time to get going with it, especially in the middle of teaching. So learn from my mistake and plan well in advance of the deadline. A good application can take several months to decide where you want to go, read through all the documentation, write out a proposal, pull together all the documentation you need, get feedback (more on this later), chase up references and so on. To maximise your chances, you really need to be thinking long-term, as in six months before the deadline. It sounds like a long time (it is), but it’s not something you can rush in an afternoon or over a weekend.

2. Plan ahead

In fact, this point is so important, it’s worth repeating twice. Plan ahead. You’ll thank me for it.

3. Make sure you know what is required of the application

I almost got lost in the amount of paperwork required in the application, so make sure you spend time going through the instructions and make a list of all the documentation and paperwork that you need to submit. This will include references, project plan, teaching plan (if your award is a mix of teaching and research), bibliography, passport picture, etc etc etc. You don’t want your application thrown out because you’ve forgotten item 1b)…

4. Have a clear plan of what it is you want to do

I can only speak for the Scholars Award (so for post-doctoral awards), but I’m sure it also applies to the post-grad awards as well: know what it is you want to do during your time in the States. Your proposal needs to be clear, concise, interesting, inspiring, and all those other buzzwords that people get excited about. What is it you hope to achieve during your time there. A timetable of intended work is really helpful to give you an idea of how your time will be spent, even if it doesn’t make it into your application pack.

5. Get feedback

You’re going to be spending a lot of time with this application. As such, your objectivity will fade and you won’t be able to see the wood for the trees. Having someone to proof-read your work, ask you questions about it and give you feedback on your application is really important. I know that part of my success in getting the Fulbright was down to having a friend read through and critique almost everything in my application before I submitted it. Things like spelling mistakes, punctuation errors, sentence fragments and so on are much easier for someone else spot, so take the time to find someone to help you out with this. Beer, dinner and other gifts are all appropriate ways of thanking your ‘reviewer’.

Tune in on Saturday for Part II, where I’ll talk about knowing your audience, ambassadorial skills and other important stuff!

– The Social Linguist

(As ever, this is not an official Fulbright/US State Department blog)

What’s the point of sociolinguistics?

I started this blog about six months ago as a way of trying to improve my ‘digital footprint’ and communicate some of my research (and other sociolinguistic research as well) out to a broader audience. What I’ve come to realise is that although sociolinguistics is generally quite an outward facing discipline (I mean, our data comes from people, so we have to talk to folk), there isn’t any compilation (that I know of) of all the work which investigates the relationship between sociolinguistic research and its application/impact in the public domain. Of course, it’s been touched on, and during the Ebonics Controvery, a great many sociolinguists made the case that AAVE should be considered as a dialect rather than as a language, something which had a significant real-life impact on speakers of AAVE. Indeed, Labov (and other researchers from Penn) have done a great deal of good for bringing sociolinguistics more firmly into the public eye, and in perhaps one of Labov’s most famous cases, he was able to prevent Paul Prinzivalli from being convicted after being accused of threatening to bomb Pan Am offices in Los Angeles. So it’s clear that sociolinguistics does have something to contribute beyond academia, yet sometimes it’s difficult to actually frame this appropriately and to make our research benefit the communities we research. As Labov points out in an article about him becoming a sociolinguist;

As much as we have gained ground [in sociolinguistic theory], the sad fact is that the Cobras and the Jets of the 1960s never benefited from our work; ten years later we learned that many of them were shot up, in prison or dead. We have not yet learned how to bring our knowledge to the teaching of reading. The enormous differential between minority and mainstream achievement in school continues to expand, year by year, and we have not yet repaid our debt to the youth who helped us on our way.

Part of this difficulty is, I think, a failure to explicitly consider the ways in which this gap might be bridged. Whether it’s the use of social media, involvement in the development of teaching programmes, education for teachers on issues of language use, educating communities about their varieties, contributing to policy on language planning, or whatever, best practices on public engagement (or even what these practices might be) haven’t really been coherently brought together in one place. We don’t have any works which talks about public engagement with and the social impact of sociolinguistic research. Which is a shame.

But maybe you should watch this space to see if that changes.

– The Social Linguist