Reena Patel 
Award type: Boren Fellowship
Award year: 2006
Country of study abroad: India
Language studied: Hindi – Unfortunately I learned woefully little of it because my interviews were in English
2. What is your degree or what’s your major?
Ph.D., Geography with a portfolio in Women’s and Gender Studies, University of Texas at Austin (The boren was during my Ph.D.)
M.S. Technology, Arizona State University
B.S. Management, University of Massachusetts – Boston
3. Why did you apply for NSEP funding?
I was drawn to the one-year service agreement, specifically the Diplomatic Fellows Program thru State Department, because I was interested in a Foreign Service career.
4. What’s your advice for NSEP applicants?
Don’t be shy about having other people read your application essays and be open to constructive criticism. Two former Boren Fellows and a professor who years before served on the Boren review board were kind enough to review my essays and without a doubt their suggestions were invaluable. Also, if more than two people tell you that a certain aspect of your essay isn’t clear, then delete it and move on. Don’t try to force fit it into your application or spend countless hours of analysis-paralysis wondering “what if…?” for a measly few sentences. I’m speaking from personal experience because one of the hardest parts of writing the essays, at least for me, was that cutting back sections that I mistakenly assumed made perfect sense.
5. What’s your favorite sentence from the application essays you submitted?
My ridiculous and shameless attempt at justifying why research on women’s employment in India’s call center industry is important to U.S. National Security interests (the second essay):
The offshore maintenance of confidential health and economic data along with the transportation information of a major U.S. airline leaves us extremely vulnerable to cyber-terrorism.
6. Have you completed your service requirement? If so, where did you complete it? If not, where would you like to complete the requirement?
I completed the service requirement via my first job out of grad school as a Foreign Service Officer with USAID
7. What’s your dream job?
My current job. I joined State Department’s Foreign Service last month as a Public Diplomacy Officer and I’m thoroughly enjoying it.
8. What’s the best career advice you have received? Can we have this be “writing advice”
Warren Adler, author of The War of Roses, was at the New York Public Library giving a book talk and during the Q&A I asked if he had any advice for first-time writers who were in the midst of completing a manuscript and wondering if they’d ever get their work published. In a group of over 50 people he looked me straight in the eye and said, “Kiddo, if writing is in your blood, whatever you do never, ever give up. If you give up, your spirit will wither.”
And in contrast to the “starving artist” narrative that is so ingrained in our imaginary of how a beginning writer lives, he spoke of the importance of pursuing a career, a substantive career, outside of writing. He illustrated this point by talking about how it took him over 15 years to get his first novel published. Hence, the importance of having a “real” job. I was certainly inspired by his passion for writing and appreciated the honesty, but at the same time thought “At that rate I won’t get my first book published till I’m 50!”
9. Do you have a favorite dish/recipe, cultural tidbit, movie, poem or picture from your host country? If so, what is it?
Bit of advice about going out at night in some parts of Mumbai, India: If you are alone and travelling on a rickshaw at 4:00am after “working the night shift” (in a call center!), and police officers–four of them to be exact–pull you over and surround the rickshaw it’s not because they are concerned for your safety.
Quite the opposite in fact: It’s because they think you are a prostitute. This is based on the perception is that “a proper girl” would not be out and about by herself. This happened to me within the first few months of living in Mumbai. In this case, it was one the few instances where my American accent and inability to speak Hindi actually saved me as the officers were left befuddled by my presence in the urban nightscape and they quickly let me go.
