A Window Seat on American Politics: Reflections on the GMFUS/APSA Congressional Fellowship

Abstract

On a foggy Monday morning in late September 2010 in Kiel, Germany, I received a phone call from Berlin. “Do you have any plans for November through summer of next year?” the voice inquired. One of the two German Marshall Fund congressional fellows for the 2010–2011 round had suddenly dropped out and a replacement was needed. The call came five months after I had been initially rejected for the fellowship, and while my life had certainly moved on (I had begun work on my PhD dissertation at the University of Kiel and had expected to stay in Northern Germany for two or three years), I quickly regained my composure, asked for time to discuss this with my dissertation director as well as with my parents, and shortly thereafter accepted the selection. Exactly how I managed to cram the amount of work required for moving overseas into four weeks instead of the usual four to six months remains blurry. Eventually, however, I was able to tie up the loose ends in Germany, get the appropriate work visa for the United States, and even participate in a prestigious, long-planned naval reserve exercise that the German Navy's chief of naval operations had invited me to attend.