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Alumni on ECLA

Karolina Lewestam, Poland
Attended: Academy Year 2002/03 & Project Year 2003/04
Currently: PhD student, Philosophy, Boston University

The ECLA experience has made me a different person.

Sometimes I wonder whether it actually created a new me or has simply helped me to rediscover my forgotten self. I also keep wondering whether it was the teachers, the program, or maybe the wonderful friends I had a privilege to meet at ECLA that have changed me. As you see, I keep wondering about things; this is also a mark that ECLA has left on me.

Among the more tangible results of my ECLA years, changing my academic focus from philosophy of language to ethics is the most important one. It requires a friendly and stimulating environment to realize, when one has "gone wrong" and betrayed their true interests. Thanks to ECLA I could confidently decide that I wanted to pursue a PhD in moral philosophy. Yet, after I was awarded a doctoral scholarship at the University of Warsaw, I soon realized that I'm "spoiled" by ECLA's intense and personalized approach to education. I enjoyed teaching philosophy to students, but not the solitary and dry process of studying at a very inflexible institution. Quite quickly I decided I wanted to continue my PhD in the US and turned to ECLA teachers' for help. Their support involved revising my applications and writing recommendation letters (where I was, most likely, seriously overrated). I was accepted to Boston University and I can confidently say that at BU I'm intellectually extremely happy.

There are other things I want to mention. Before ECLA I was full of various shames. I feared asking simple questions, I was scared to admit that I wanted to write fiction; I always wanted to appear somewhat different than I was. These shames are too much a part of me to be fully cured, but ECLA is a recommendable medicine.

Tomorrow I'm taking a "China Bus" to New York, to spend a couple of days with my ECLA friend Diana, who is doing her PhD at NYU. I'm also going to give an interview to the biggest Polish journal in the US, about a liberal education project in Poland that my friends and me, inspired by places like ECLA, are working on. ECLA's influence on my life is profound and long lasting; I'm grateful for that.