On April 6, 12:50 pm, I got the email — the email that had me stalking every NSLI-Y Discord, Facebook, and College Confidential channel at 2 am and relentlessly refreshing my email when I should’ve been paying attention to my oh-so-riveting Zoom classes. Yes, that was the moment when the NSLI-Y gods notified me of my acceptance to their in-person Korean summer program!

After a bout of collective familial screaming and mild confusion from my teacher as to why I had left my “Join Breakout Room” invitation untouched, I settled down enough to process the email’s contents. After an in-person Pre-Departure Orientation in mid-June in San Francisco, during which I will meet other NSLI-Y finalists and learn about program expectations, I will spend 7 weeks studying Korean in Seoul, South Korea.

Receiving a NSLI-Y scholarship any year would be cause for elation, but my acceptance this year felt especially miraculous. Amidst COVID-19, NSLI-Y was forced to cancel in-person summer programs for all but two countries, South Korea and Taiwan — and the two language programs I’d applied to happened to be Korean (my 1st choice) and Chinese (my 2nd choice). However, finalists for these languages could be placed in either in-person abroad programs or virtual programs.

I would’ve been incredibly thankful for any finalist program placement, of course, but being named an in-person finalist brought me more joy and gratification than I could’ve imagined. It justified the hours I’d spent toiling over my essays, pestering the (very kind and patient) NSLI-Y alumni of LinkedIn for advice, preparing for my interview, and bingeing every NSLI-Y vlog on the face of YouTube.

Moreover, like most human beings, I’d been famished for good news and desperate for a morsel of hope, for something to look forward to after surviving a literally hellish year. Needless to say, NSLI-Y delivered just that. I’m still shocked at how serendipitous I’ve been in everything from me selecting Korean as my first choice to NSLI-Y working their butts off to ensure a safe in-person program would be possible.

I’m endlessly grateful for this opportunity and all the puzzle pieces that had to fall into place for it to even be feasible. NSLI-Y will undoubtedly look different this year — the 14-day quarantine period upon arriving in Korea, for one, will be interesting. Nonetheless, I can’t wait to immerse myself in a beautiful language and culture, forge cross-cultural friendships with youth from around the world, and embark on this amazing journey!

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Wait, what even is NSLI-Y?

For those unfamiliar, NSLI-Y stands for National Security Language Initiative for Youth and is a fully-funded study abroad scholarship from the U.S. Department of State. Through NSLI-Y, high schoolers can intensively study Chinese, Hindi, Indonesian, Korean, Persian, Russian, or Turkish (8 less frequently taught but critically needed languages for Americans) for either a summer or academic year. As the website explains, NSLI-Y “provides overseas critical language study opportunities to American youth through merit-based scholarships to spark a lifetime interest in critical foreign languages and cultures.”

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한국어 부품 (Korean Part)

In which I flex my delightfully underdeveloped Korean skills. Corrections are more than welcome! I also don’t really know how to spell or space words (or whether commas are used differently/less frequently than in English?), so… please help ㅜㅜ 도와주세요! ㅜㅜ

사월 육일있었어요. 화요일 있었어요, 그래서 학요에 있었어요. 그런데 열두시 오십분에, NSLI-Y가 저한테 이메일을 보냈어요. 저는 NSLI-Y 장학금을 받았어요! 진짜, 너무 행복했어요!

지금도 아직 노무 행복해요. 이월뒤에 저는 한국에 갈 거예요. 와!

오늘의 노래 (Song of the Day)

In which I share a song reflecting my current mood/life developments, because I suffer from the extremely common affliction of thinking my music taste should be universally appreciated and adored

NSLI-Y 때문에, 저는 행복해요. 춤추하고 싶어요! 그리고 이 노래는 “Waltz” 이라고 합니다. Waltz 춤이에요 ㅋㅋㅋㅋ

(Translation: Because of NSLI-Y, I am happy. I want to dance! And this song is called “Waltz.” The Waltz is a dance. lolololol)

Believe it or not, those stylistic (and probably grammatical) disasters of Korean sentences required the entirety of my 0.5 brain cells — so please do send feedback, corrections, study tips/resources, etc. in the comments or directly to me! And stay tuned for my next post about my pre-program language goals and study plan 😀