News

By Jennifer Tipton

FLASHBACK: 2005, Calcutta, India: I am a huge sports fan, and I enjoy watching every kind of sports. American Football is not an exception. It was the year 2005 and I was watching the Big 12 championship game on ESPN in Calcutta. It was a game between the University of Southern California Trojans and the University of Texas at Austin Longhorns football team. The Longhorns finished with thirteen wins and no losses and emerged as the National Champions of that year. After their victory, which was arguably called the greatest performance in the college football history, I saw a few clippings of the great celebration that the students had at UT on my TV set. To learn more about this University I did a little google search. I was really taken aback by the life on campus and the students. I read the interviews of football coach Mark Brown and quarter back Vince Young and learned a lot about the Longhorns and the University of Texas. I had actually started liking this place and fallen in love with the UT Tower. I had a strong feeling in my heart of hearts that someday if I ever visited the USA, I would visit Austin, at least for a day.

FLASHFORWARD: January 2007, Austin, United States: I was one of the several candidates who had sent applications to the Fulbright House in New Delhi for the Foreign Language teaching program. After the Entrance Exam, interview, and rigorous training, I found myself to be one of the few candidates who were selected to teach in the USA. But it was only a primary selection, we had not yet got our placements or the terms of appointment. In March 2007, I got my appointment letter from the International Institute of Education stating that the University of Texas would be my host institution. Although I was very excited about the whole life-changing experience that I was about to encounter, many impediments came my way. The biggest of them was the visa! When a few of my Fulbright friends had already left India, I was still hoping against hopes that I would get a visa! Some day! My joy knew no bounds when I finally got my visa, three weeks before my date of departure to the USA, but it was short-lived. Upon reaching Calcutta, I was hospitalized for two weeks. There was a cancerous stone in my gall bladder which was spreading all around my body and that had to be removed. All my hopes of going to USA were crushed! But I believe in the power of dreams, that if our dreams are honest, God himself comes down to earth to make them come true. Though all my family members, friends and my personal doctor were very much against my going abroad in this physical condition- I convinced them and braved myself to a new world full of challenges. I landed in the USA on the 19th of August 2007. After a brief orientation in Madison, Wisconsin, I came to Austin, Texas, on the 25th of August. A few days later I went to the University campus one evening. I was humming Bryan Adam’s "Here I am." I saw the Tower and she looked exactly the way I had seen her two years back, illuminated, beautiful- like a bride. My American dream had just began!

JT: You are visiting UT this semester as a Fulbright scholar. What is your home university and program of study?
SR: Yes, I am a Fulbright Fellow from India visiting the University of Texas at Austin for the academic year 2007- 2008. I graduated from Calcutta University in the year 2005 with a degree in English (Honors). I completed my Masters in English from Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, in 2007.

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