Title VIII Scholarship Recipient Profile: Kaitlyn Lee
Kaitlyn Lee reflects on her virtual summer on the Balkan Language Initiative Program (BLI) as a Title VIII scholarship recipient and how she immersed herself in the Bosnian language and culture from her home.
I first fell in love with the Balkans during my year as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Bulgaria. I had the opportunity to study Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (BCS) during my Master’s program at the Hamilton Lugar School at Indiana University, which allowed me to fall in love with Bosnia and drove me to apply for the Balkan Language Initiative program.
Unfortunately, the pandemic meant that my program was online. All I wanted to do was go sit in a café and be surrounded by the language and culture. But I also found ways to engage that I probably wouldn’t have otherwise. I took virtual museum tours and got really into watching episodes of a Bosnian sitcom!
My instructor Asmira, the American Councils staff, and our conversation partners were all extremely friendly and welcoming. They went above and beyond to make sure that my classmates and I were getting the most authentic and immersive experience that we could.
I actually still watch episodes from Lud, zbunjen, normalan – the sitcom that I started watching during my program. TV shows are great because it’s often fast, casual language that you don’t get from a textbook and you can learn a lot about the culture as well!
I’ve done several study abroad/ language immersion programs before, and this has by far been the most language progress that I’ve made in a summer! I loved the variety of topics and events that were planned for us.
Right now, I’m working for the Center for European Analysis as a Title VIII Fellow and my research revolves around Bosnia! It’s a great way to use the linguistic and cultural knowledge that I gained last summer and also to expand my political and policy knowledge of Bosnia and the region. In the future, I hope to work for the State Department as a Foreign Service Officer, where of course, I would love to serve in Bosnia.
I recommend that you give as much time and effort as you can to studying the language and experiencing the culture because you’ll be amazed at how much you can learn in one summer.
About Title VIII Fellowships for Overseas Language Study:
The U.S. Department of State, Program for Research and Training on Eastern Europe and the Independent States of the Former Soviet Union (Title VIII), provides fellowship support to graduate students in policy-relevant fields who wish to participate in the American Councils Advanced Russian Language and Area Studies Program (RLASP), the Balkan Language Initiative (BLI), or the Eurasian Regional Language Program (ERLP). More information about Title VIII Fellowships for Overseas Language Study can be found here.
By: Kaitlyn Lee
Program: Balkan Language Initiative
Term: Summer 2020