Julia Augustyn
Ambitious. Curious. Driven.
I used to think that being between cultures meant I didn’t fully belong to any of them. But over time, I’ve learned that this “in-betweenness” is a bridge. This E-Portfolio traces my journey of building knowledge, community, and reflecting on the purpose of my experiences through language, research, and intercultural immersion.
Raised by Polish immigrants in the U.S., I spent much of my early life translating. That role sparked my curiosity about how do we come to understand cultures that aren’t our own?
At Wesleyan University, I began to seek answers through the Global Engagement Minor. The program gave me a space to integrate my passion for environmental science with a growing commitment to intercultural praxis. I studied Italian and Brazilian Portuguese and I studied abroad in Florianópolis, Brazil and Bologna, Italy.
This e-portfolio documents what I’ve learned from my transformative intercultural experiences; my time in Brazil, where I conducted environmental fieldwork and built relationships with conservation leaders in the Atlantic Forest, attended university and slept on the beach, and my academic immersion in Italy, where I studied natural resource management and ate gelato in the piazzas. And, in each place, I didn’t arrive as an expert, but I arrived ready to listen and observe. I’ve come to believe that sustainable solutions, whether environmental or intercultural, require presence, patience, and humility. And real engagement starts with quiet but powerful questions: Where am I? Who am I? Who am I with? What can I learn here? How can we learn together?
Pursuing global engagement is a commitment to lifelong learning across boundaries. Through this portfolio, you’ll find reflections, statements of purpose, and critical thinking prompts that will display this dedication. You’ll also see a thread of continuity: the belief that we build connection, impact, and identity slowly, through language, landscape, and lived experience.
