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Close Encounters

In conversations with almost a dozen Watson fellows from º¬Ðß²ÝÑо¿ÊÒ who graduated between 1975 and 2023, it is immediately obvious how different each Watson fellowship year is. Their research topics are diverse, the approaches to exploring these topics vary widely, and the countries traversed are literally all over the map. But some basic commonalities emerge from the many threads of their itinerant narratives all the same.

Clara Benadon ’23 put her finger on one. During her year abroad, she studied climate change and the fiber industries of Scotland, Norway, the Faroe Islands, Argentina, Portugal, and New Zealand. When we spoke, she had just flown in from New Zealand to attend the returning fellows conference. Asked about a theme that runs through the Watson program, she said, “I think it would be connection. I had to be more intentional about connecting each time I landed in a new place.” Though she admitted this never ceased to be daunting, she said she always succeeded in finding people to talk with, to befriend, and to help her make progress on her project.

The Watson fellowship is unique because it asks young people to take on the role of the stranger, not just once but over and over again.

As soon as they get comfortable living in a village in Indonesia, or they make friends with a rugby team in Calcutta, they might need to depart. They develop strategies to cope with repeatedly being in this position, and as the year progresses, they become more adept at making new and varied connections. Plus, the essential nature of the program—unstructured, free, unfettered from requirements to earn money or credits toward a graduate degree—opens fellows up to the unexpected.

Though they follow an overarching trajectory of their own devising, they are really questing for months on end. While their objective is somewhat concrete (they have submitted a written proposal with a goal, after all), it is also abstract and internal, since it is just knowledge and self-knowledge they’re seeking.

Kasabach says this is purposeful: “The reason it is so important for us not to require an end product is because even very well-conceived projects change when you engage with others in another culture,” he said.

“We want them to remain explorative, curious, and open to reframing their project and questions.” This puts fellows in an ideal place to form relationships with people who are very different from them and to take the risk of initiating connections and conversations with uncertain outcomes.

As former Watson fellows described their journeys, several brought up anecdotes about meeting someone along the way and having a discussion that so burrowed into them that many years later they could still recall it. For some, these encounters elucidated larger themes about what they gained from their trip. For others, the interactions created a moment when their ideas about themselves and the year they had planned suddenly shifted.

Connecting with others along their journeys means fellows must take risks, confront new ideas, experiment with different tactics to approach and relate to others, and brace themselves to be disappointed or discombobulated at times, as well as delighted or comforted. To talk with someone, especially a person who doesn’t know you or quite understand what you’re up to, requires focused engagement, self-knowledge, solidarity, and trust—and in turn becomes a wellspring for deepening that engagement, self-knowledge, solidarity, and trust.

Hailey Wozniak ’20—a film and TV assistant for a small entertainment firm in Los Angeles—traveled to Argentina, France, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, Korea, India, and Turkey to study “how people cultivate their identities, react to their environments, and break boundaries through fashion.” She reflects that she rarely regretted the decision “to ask someone a question, even something as benign as directions,” she said, “because often that direction would come with a little tip or hint, and that is something you will never get with technology. That is why the Watson will always exist.”

Street Talk

Brandon Morande ’19 traveled to London, Cardiff, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Copenhagen,Auckland, and Santiago to study the ways people experiencing homelessness support one another. “I have a family history and personal history with homelessness and housing insecurity, so that is what motivated it on a personal level,” he said.

When he left on his journey, he was determined “to get a sense of how peers create spaces that allow people to fight the isolation, loneliness, and stigma of living on the street.” He watched the World Homeless Cup in Wales and hung out in a café in Auckland that employed unsheltered people. “I was interested in how these peer-led groups allowed people to occupy spaces they might otherwise be excluded from—whether it is sports, journalism, or art—and to tell a different story about who they are and what they are doing.”

Though energized by his subject and buoyed by traveling, Morande hit a wall after a few months on the road. He remembers shivering in the cold and dark of wintertime Copenhagen, discouraged by the language barrier—many of the city’s homeless were immigrants who didn’t speak English. “I was struggling to do my project and struggling to be motivated to get on the streets and speak with people,” he said. One day he ran into an older man living near the train station, panhandling and playing music. He was an immigrant who spoke English, and the two began talking, initially about the man’s life. Then Morande remembers letting the conversation flow in a new direction.

“At that moment, I was looking for support and for someone to talk with,” he said. “It became a space for me to express how I was feeling. It was a space where we were able to share.” In the relief that followed, Morande said he realized, “I need to do more to allow two-way relationships. It became obvious to me that I also needed support and community, which is what the project was about!”

As the year went on, Morande said he strengthened his skills at both listening and sharing a “piece of himself” with others. “That is something I grew to be able to do, which definitely helped in speaking with strangers in spaces I wasn’t familiar with,” he said.

When he returned to the states, Morande got a job with a street outreach program in North Carolina. Today he’s pursuing his PhD in sociology at the University of Washington, with the goal of one day teaching and producing public scholarship that helps shape policies and programs to help those who are homeless.

Me, Having Conversations

Two months into her trip, Mary Nzeyimana ’22 described a moment of catharsis following a low period—and a conversation. After she had spent time in Tanzania, she traveled to South Africa to volunteer with Arise, an NPO that works with children, parents, and caregivers to provide support and be a place for children to feel safe, loved, and find a sense of belonging.

Nzeyimana was born in wartime Burundi and grew up in a refugee camp in East Africa. She immigrated to the United States with her mother when she was eleven years old and, because her English was stronger than her mother’s, took on much of the responsibility of managing the household.

Despite maturing at º¬Ðß²ÝÑо¿ÊÒ, she said there was still a part of her that was “closed off” as she set out on her Watson. “I was not adventurous; I was very timid and not comfortable within myself.” One day in South Africa, she was having “a rough day,” she said, and broke down in tears. The two women directors of the program asked her to tell them what was wrong. “One had this aura of, ‘Speak to me.’ They were very inviting. So I said, ‘This is my life story,’” she explained. “Speaking to them was lovely.” Something then worked free inside of her, she said. “I came to a space of acceptance.”

She felt her resentment about her upbringing begin to dissipate, replaced with compassion. This unburdening continued as she carried on traveling. “The Watson allowed me to build my relationship with my mom, and coming back, I was so happy to see her. Our relationship post-Watson has been the best it’s ever been,” she said.

As Nzeyimana spoke about her time in Tanzania, South Africa, India, Thailand, England, Scotland, and Sweden exploring women caregivers, and eventually men caregivers as well, she described a continual process of becoming freer and braver.

The first thing that happened to her, in Africa, was an unloosing of the daily stress of racism. She can speak Swahili, so in Tanzania she was not considered so much of an outsider. She also began to release herself from the strain of achieving, a weight she had lived with for years and which only grew heavier at º¬Ðß²ÝÑо¿ÊÒ.

“The Watson gave me the space to breathe,” she said, “where all I had to do was exist.” The only thing being asked of her was to talk to people. “Me, having conversations, that was it—that was me doing my project. That was so freeing. I didn’t feel pressure to produce, and once I realized that, it took off from there.” She went on adventures in the jungle and in the mountains, sleeping in villages where she knew no one. She toured temples, signed up for paragliding and skydiving, and ate adventurously. She initiated conversations everywhere she went. She even met her life partner during her Watson year.

Today she is a clinical research coordinator in Boston working on studies for older Black adults with chronic pain. After her Watson year, she said she no longer wants to be a doctor; instead, she wants to work in public health.

“I want to lead a life like a Watson fellow—to be excited, to pivot, to travel, and to transition to something new that aligns with my goals and values,” she said.

Doesn't Need to be this Deep Thing

Nzeyimana is quick to point out that Watson encounters can happen with the lightest of touches. “There are many different ways we can connect to people, and it doesn’t need to be this deep thing,” she explained.

Sometimes she stopped people on the street to tell them she liked their dress or to ask what was happening across the road. “I used anything to connect with people, even just that we’re in the same physical space, like a café, or we’re connecting being women, or foreigners, or having moms.”

As Emily Oleisky ’20 journeyed from country to country, she found that her Watson topic made an easy opener. Now in medical school, she focused on studying how people in Peru, Costa Rica, Mexico, Italy, Switzerland, Turkey, and Israel think about health and the ways they practice well-being in nonclinical settings.

“Everyone has some definition of health or wellness in their own life,” she said. “That is a topic you can connect with someone over no matter where you hail from. That was a beautiful part of the project.”

Rodrigo Bijou ’14 won a Watson to explore a subject that perhaps knits the world together like no other—hacking. He set out to research “marginalized and powerful online communities” that are practicing post-national forms of power. In just a few months, he became enough of an expert to give a TED talk in London on borderless cyber warfare. Today he is a security engineer with a tech company in San Francisco.

“The title of my project was ‘Trust in Technology,’” he said. He traveled to Buenos Aires, London, Bangkok, and Singapore, and in each place had to figure out how to earn some trust with secretive groups. It didn’t help that his apparent lack of a motive or agenda was viewed with suspicion.

“As an American, it is immediately assumed you are part of the CIA, especially me, as it appeared I was pretending to be on a strange fellowship from a foreign country,” he said. “It was for a lot of people a huge turnoff and an immediate reason not to trust me, so I had to demonstrate value through technical competence and find ways of being useful without being too political, mercenary, and commercial.” His solution? “Going over data breaches together in a bar was a very nerdy and good way to ingratiate myself.”

Today he’s still good friends with people he met on his travels. Many of them he initially reached out to online and then earned their faith face-to-face. “I’d message them on the internet and then meet them in a bar. It was ‘trust in the world’ a little bit.”

Wozniak said one of the high points of her Watson year happened at the Cannes Film Festival. After being awarded a special pass for young filmmakers, she readied herself “for two weeks of running into people and making connections.” With some research and forethought, she managed to intercept a producer on his way to his film premiere and established enough of a connection to get a temporary job in his production company in Italy.

“That is the way the Watson and being fearless can bring you places,” she said. As she figured out how to communicate with people around the world, she found being overly friendly didn’t always work as well as simple straightforwardness.

Phui Yi Kong ’15 also said that simplifying her intentions worked best. She spent her year in Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, Bangladesh, and Australia, studying how martial arts, physical theater, and somatic psychotherapy can spur people to civic action.

“People often didn’t understand my project when I tried to explain it in its entirety, so I made it straightforward. I would say, ‘I want to be a student in your class, or I want to participate in your practice.’ And then continually showing up and showing interest also helped.”

As with Nzeyimana, the Watson provided Kong an avenue to “just exist,” where she could practice communicating her intentions without filtering for others expectations. “The Watson pushed me to express my true interests in the wider world,” she said. “I was suddenly free of being someone for somebody else or an institution, and could instead pursue my own questions.”

Inviting In Strangers

Ellen Baxter ’75, H’05—an early Watson fellow—didn’t hop from country to country but lived instead in a single place, the small Belgium city of Geel, where she bicycled ancient streets and visited with families.

Since the fourteenth century, residents of Geel have welcomed people with mental illnesses into their homes and cared for them. Baxter arrived with a question born from her uneasiness observing people in the US living on the streets or sent away to institutions. “I was curious about why people get thrown away or set aside, and I wanted to know what motivated the welcoming understanding and kindness in Geel toward people who are not well,” she said.

Baxter remembers spending hours chatting with families and their “boarders.” She liked to time her visits during the late morning as families were preparing their lunchtime meal—often peeling potatoes in keeping with the national addiction to French fries. She often jettisoned her planned interview questions to pore over photo albums and listen to reminiscences of weddings, vacations, and family get-togethers.

The albums always included photos of boarders sipping piña coladas or lying in lounge chairs with the rest of the family. In these conversations, Baxter began to understand that the boarders, no matter their eccentricities and oddities, were accepted, if not quite as family, certainly as integral members of the community. In particular, she remembered speaking with one woman whose American family had shipped her off to Geel years earlier. Her host parents eventually aged and passed away, but the boarder remained—there was never any question about it. “She was the queen of the household,” Baxter recalled.

Baxter wanted to find a way to bring Geel’s humane tradition back to the United States, a determination that led her to found Broadway Housing Communities in New York City in 1983. After four decades, the housing development now includes seven residential buildings, two early childhood centers, three community art galleries, and a museum. Today, about a third of the residents in the housing complex have a mental illness.

“In Geel, I learned how tolerance is something that happens over time,” Baxter said. In her New York buildings, neighbors learn to adapt to one another. “Someone might do odd things or give you a dirty look in the elevator. They just shrug and say ‘hi’ and keep going. Accepting that people come out in so many different forms is the smoothest path forward.”

Encountering Unknown Places

While the Watson year is by design very social, it also includes solitary exploration in a busy, crowded world. There is a lot of alone time. Travelers become attuned to themselves and their surroundings, connecting with and learning not just from people but also from the places they are in.

David Bruce ’13 challenged himself to learn about manmade and natural solutions to sea level rise—like levees, dams, floodgates, dikes, and mangrove swamps—through observation and making art. Though he conducted interviews with government officials, architects, and engineers—and joined local rugby teams everywhere he went—“the year was about drawing,” he said.

It’s a habit he maintains today. “It has become integral to me; it has become a daily practice,” he said, both for his own art and for his work as an architect. “When there is so much trying to grab your attention,” he continued, “there is a stillness in that creative process; it feels very grounding. I don’t think that would have become a part of my life if I hadn’t been granted this incredible opportunity to do nothing but draw and explore.”

He also appreciated the chance to learn in a tangible, hands-on way. “When you go to a place with a particular set of questions, interests, and things you enjoy, you get a totally different experience than just researching something in the library,” he said.

“Putting your body in a particular space—feeling it, hearing it, smelling it, seeing it—there is a fuller understanding.”