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Prepare for Departure

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By Christopher Phelps

If all goes well, by the time you read this, I will be airborne. For the coming academic year, I was awarded a Fulbright fellowship to teach American studies at the University of Lodz in central Poland. My family is madly preparing to depart.

"If all goes well": no empty phrase. It is highly probable that we will make the plane, but uncertain that we will wrap up all the loose ends.

My wife, Carol, and I are giving new meaning to "multitasking" as we tackle the logistics of transporting a family of five to the far side of the earth for a year. Our children -- Rosa, 4; Nowell, 5; and Emma, 7 -- are logistics in themselves, but I refer to the more uncommon tasks before us.

At the top of the list is the bureaucratic maneuvering required to finesse the passports, plane tickets, and visas, a saga not yet complete. We await the visas from the Polish Embassy still, a mere 12 days away from our scheduled departure.

Many minuscule details require action as the sand runs through the hourglass. Pay the house insurance for a year ahead. Make sure the digital camera will download onto the notebook computer. Suspend newspaper and magazine subscriptions. Obtain legal software, modify the house-rental form, and sign the resulting contract with the sabbatical tenants. Pack and send donated cartons of English-language books to Poland. Ensure that our health-care plan is configured properly for out-of-country coverage and will be continuous during the leave. Arrange for absentee ballots.

We read up on Polish history, culture, literature, and society. While driving in the car, we listen again and again to Polish-language CD's that we bought from Pimsleur -- a clever, repetitive method of foreign-language introduction. We bring home Polish videos from the library, ranging from the serious (a PBS documentary on the Lodz ghetto during the Holocaust) to the weird (With Fire and Sword, a Polish Braveheart) to the disconcerting (The Debt, a drama about the Polish mafia).

I struggle to complete the writing commitments I have made. I am supposed to proofread a manuscript back from the copy editor, finish two book reviews and two encyclopedia entries, revise an essay to be included in a book published by Princeton, and finish this column -- all before we leave.

Organizing my Polish courses for the fall provides another vector of concern. The students, upper-level, American-studies majors and master's students, will speak English, so I can teach in my native tongue. However, there will be a range of aptitude. I am told to keep reading assignments to a minimal length. I must decide upon readings, design course syllabi (with no certitude about the precise number of class sessions), and revise my lectures to meet the new topics the program desired.

A million questions about Poland loom unanswered in our minds. Will the three rooms of our university-supplied apartment truly be contained within a 10-foot by 18-foot circumference, as the e-mail stated? Must a guest, as reputed, drink the whole bottle of vodka if a host opens one? Do we have enough long underwear and fleece to endure the cold, dark Polish winter? Will our children be welcomed by Polish schools, or should we prepare to home-school? Will we have Internet access from our home? Will there be a gym or a swimming pool at the university? Are the warnings of the Polish Fulbright commission about crime and pollution part of a shrewd strategy to encourage realism, or forebodings of a difficult experience to come? (The Debt did not inspire much confidence.)

But not all is anxiety. The kids chatter away in the pidgin Polish they've picked up from the Pimsleur CD's. Time will tell whether their dialect is comprehensible to Poles. This morning, when we lined up the family's hiking boots and leather shoes for buffing and waterproofing -- a task that took twice as long as anticipated -- Emma declared, "Shoe polish. Shoe Polish. Well, we thought it was funny.

This is the first in a series of columns that will chronicle my Fulbright experience. In describing my family's unsettled state, I've hoped to provide a sketch, familiar to travelers, of how the journey begins. However, well before this last-minute departure stage came the first step: the application process. For the remainder of this first column, I will address the nature of Fulbright grants and offer some advice on applying for them.

What is a Fulbright? Some people associate the Fulbright grant only with student awards, but the international exchange program offers many different kinds of fellowships. You can read about most of them at the Web site of the Council for the International Exchange of Scholars (CIES), which administers the Fulbright program for the U.S. Department of State.

For faculty members, there are two main Fulbright categories: teaching awards (from simple to august) and research awards (permitting archival, artistic, or scientific work in foreign locations). The program also offers awards to professionals like school teachers and engineers unattached to any university.

Fellowships are awarded in a broad array of disciplines, with subjects as diverse as chemistry, film studies, literature, and urban planning. Potential destinations are extensive. A scan through the current offerings in American studies alone will find positions in Algeria, Austria, Bahrain, China, Germany, Ghana, Israel, Italy, Lithuania, Norway, Pakistan, Spain, Sri Lanka, Turkey, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam.

In other words, people in all fields and at all ranks receive Fulbrights, and they go just about anywhere. The council sends nearly 800 professionals a year to 140 countries, while bringing about 800 scholars and professionals to the United States.

How can you increase your chances of obtaining a Fulbright? Disclaimer: I have no inside knowledge. I have never been asked to judge Fulbright applications. I have twice received the grant, so I can offer conjectures arising from that limited success -- but my thoughts apply to the teaching award, not the other categories.

The first thing to bear in mind is that the specific grant you seek should fit your own interests and abilities. That may seem the most obvious sort of advice, applicable to any grant, but for the Fulbright I suspect it particularly important. The program seeks a successful fit between the American scholar and the host institution and country, so as to produce minimal friction and maximum enrichment for all parties concerned.

In my case, the former Communist states of Hungary (location of my first Fulbright four years ago) and Poland have histories of intellectual and working-class dissent that have direct bearing on my interest in the global history of the anti-Stalinist left and my long-range research project into transnational theories of a professional or bureaucratic "new class."

Although I did not seek a research Fulbright -- I will not be interviewing Poles or visiting archives -- I could make a plausible case that I had some familiarity with and interest in Eastern Europe that would allow me to adapt myself to teaching there.

A second factor that may be helpful in increasing your chances of obtaining a Fulbright is to secure an invitation from a host institution in advance. If in the country of your desired destination a university department is willing to provide you with a base of operation, it makes for a smooth process. You will have done part of the job of arranging your visit yourself.

For my first Fulbright, I chose Hungary as a country that seemed sufficiently remote to be intriguing, while being stable and safe for a family. But what Hungarian university might host me? I sent out a query. Although he had barely met me, the eminent philosopher Richard Rorty connected me with a pair of Hungarian intellectuals who invited me to teach in their program in the history of philosophy in the beautiful city of Pecs. (A particularly gracious act, given that Rorty disputes positions I have taken in my scholarship on pragmatism.) I believe that having that Hungarian letter of invitation was important in the success of my first application.

In turn, that led to my second Fulbright, the distinguished chair I am about to fill in Poland. The council invited me to apply for the position last summer, after the spring deadline had passed. Perhaps it hadn't enough qualified applicants in the first round, and so turned to former Fulbrighters for fresh recruits. At age 39, I do not feel "distinguished" and would not have applied for such a position cold. But once invited, why not?

Perhaps all of this may prompt you to imagine your own prospects for a Fulbright. My next installment will be relayed from Europe. If all goes well.