"I'm Never Applying for the Watson!"

I'm a good student. I pay full attention in class. Especially given my seat in the front row.

OK. Never mind. Scratch that.

To tell the real truth, I'm over class. My time as a student is burnt to a crisp. My mind is far from my final general studies class in "Contemporary global issues." Prof. Clark laughs as he passed around a box of seasoned crickets, and another box of chocolates.

"Who's going to give the crickets a try?" No one cares for cricket

welfare! Confinement cricket agriculture, how about that?" This was his version of hands on education: insect produce far less greenhouse gas emissions than beef, chicken, or chocolate. The future is crickets, I learn, in more ways than one.

Honestly, the crickets are far more palatable than the soy imitation of canned tuna. BLEEH. I felt no guilt tossing that uneaten can in the trash.

But today I forego note taking. My stands computer unabashedly open. After seven months of waiting—today is the day my fate is decided. Will Moriah and I travel the world in search of absurd stories of hope?

By now, they should have emailed me. It's almost noon. Every email that hits my inbox receives and excited glance of anticipation, yet to no avail. I'm ready for an answer, the waiting has been long enough. Even a "no" will suffice, I've poured enough expectation and wild gamble into this fellowship, and like my class, I'm ready to move on. Why did I even apply for this fellowship? What madness came over me? God alone knows.

In fact, I was dead set against applying for the Watson. Who would want to travel haphazardly around the world for a year, with no real time to get to know any single place?

"Maybe some people," I said to myself, "but certainly not me." It seemed like a sort of betrayal, to people, relationships, and place.

"I'm not applying for the Watson!"

But as I stood on the banks of troublesome creek, something flipped within me. Overnight, the water rose rapidly in a mammoth storm over the mountains of eastern Kentucky. Thirty-nine people died. Those who had nothing, lost everything.

"The limits of our language define the limits of our world" wrote the German philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. I knew then I needed the limits of my world expanded if I were to find hope for my life, and the future life of eastern Kentucky. To find practical hope. Such a mission could well carry me around the world, and, indeed, through life. And I needed it.

I threw in my lot. I began my application with a voice recording walking though the bright woods of Kentucky. Transcribed, I worked the words again and again, attempting to thread a needle through the story of my life.

My life is made up of people and places that formed me and loved me. And so appropriately I found and shaped my story in conversation and reflection with mentors and peers. Ten times and more the 1500 words were written and rewritten.

My dear friends Caleb, Eliane, Mattie, Ethan, Nathaniel Fish also applied. We gathered together and encouraged each other as we prepared our applications. I almost quit. Computer error caused me to lose hours of my application, the night before the first deadline. What was I doing? Determined to die a warrior's death, I rewrote the application through the night. When my application was thrown out, I reasoned, I could rest satisfied knowing it was a job well done.

We celebrated the next day with a toast of pear water kefir, and a reading aloud of our personal statements.

And now here I was, months later, still, somehow, waiting for an answer. The possibility of winning seemed a foreign reality, too good to be true. Honestly, a “no” would allow me to relax and move on in life. If I could trade in my chance for the certainty that one of my friends would win..! All these last months felt like holding my breath, just waiting to see what happened. And yet, still, nothing...!

I left class checking my phone as I exit the building.

"8 missed calls from Mo." I check my texts.

"Elijah! Elijah! Pick up the phone!" she wrote. Attached was a screenshot from the Watson website. From the screenshot preview, my name was certainly not on the list. My heart fell. Well, at least I knew!