Writings

Excerpt from Fulbright Grant Application 2004

By Tanja Andric

My brother, sister and I were raised in our early years on the south side of Chicago. We spent much of our time outdoors, visiting friends and going to church. Our upbringing was simple and modest. We were raised in a neighborhood that was rich with people of different races, colors, and religions. There was never enough time to play and explore nature. I remember vividly loving life very much as a child. Dad was a soccer player who later went on to become an engineer. My earliest memory was playing catch outside with my dad. In second grade, I was placed in a special enrichment class for gifted children. A friend and I were programming in basic when it first emerged in third and fourth grade. In high school, I was also a member of the speech team for extemporaneous and special occasion speaking. I also spent ten years dancing in a Serbian Folklore Dance Group with my church. Sports were always natural for me. Swimming, running, biking, volleyball, and soccer have always been a real indulgence. One of my dreams is to attend either the summer or winter Olympics because I have such a reverence for the spirit of sport.In 1994, I completed a bachelor of science in biology with a minor in history at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. Following a series of bouts with meningits, I was fortunately able to complete a bachelor of arts in chemistry as well in 2001 from Indiana University. After graduation from college, I began to travel. In 1994, my sister and I traveled from Moscow to parts of Europe for nearly 12 weeks. We visited Greece, Yugoslavia, Czech Republic, Italy, and France. We also spent a few days in London, England. I really love traveling. In particular, I enjoyed Paris and Poquerolle (a small island off the southern coast of France.) My sister and I also visited Amboise, where Leonardo da Vinci was buried.Despite my love for travel, it is always nice to be home in the United States. In July of this year I visited Manzanita, a small town on the Oregon coastline. A friend of mine was married there by a lighthouse at dusk. The natural beauty of Oregon and some of the other protected national parks around the country make me feel very proud to be a citizen of this beautiful, glorious country.My friends and family are my assets. I have friends from all over the world. It brings me great pleasure to learn about other cultures and the history of other nations. It is my belief that this knowledge and bridge between cultures can help facilitate strong bonds between people that can eventually lead to world peace.Study in the basic and applied sciences has furthered my knowledge and peaked my own natural curiosity. In the summer of 2004, I completed a master’s of science degree in physiology and biophysics at the University of Illinois at Chicago. My aspirations lie in scientific research. I would like to advance my knowledge of basic mammalian physiology. It is my belief that through the advancement of science and through scientific inquiry we can better address biomedical problems that at present remain unsolvable. Eventually, I also hope to provide funding for the arts, namely music, dance, and the visual arts. In my entire life I cannot remember a day when I felt there were enough hours in a day to live, learn and experience everything wonderful that life has to offer.

Blissful Longing

By Johann Wolfgang Von GoetheTell nobody except the wisebecause the mob is immediately scornful;I wish to parise that element of lifewhich longs for a fiery death.In that coolness of nights of loveWhich begat you, where you begat,an unfamiliar sensation comes over youwhen the silent taper shines.No longer do you remain embraced by the shadow of the darkness,but a new desire draws youupward to a higher form of mating.No degree of distance makes you doubtful;you fly over and fall under a spell,and, at last, lusting for light,like a moth you are burned to death.And so long as you don’t have it,this “Die and be transformed!,”you will only be a gloomy gueston the dark earth.

IF

By Rudyard KiplingIf you can keep your head when all about youAre losing theirs and blaming it on you;If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,But make allowance for their doubting too:If you can wait and not be tired of waiting,Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,Or being hated don’t give way to hating,And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;If you can dream-and not make dreams your master;If you can think-and not make thoughts your aim,If you can meet with Triumph and DisasterAnd treat those two impostors just the same:If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spokenTwisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out toolsIf you can make one heap of all your winningsAnd risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,And lose, and start again at your beginnings,And never breathe a word about your loss:If you can force your heart and nerve and sinewTo serve your turn long after they are gone,And so hold on when there is nothing in youExcept the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,Or walk with Kings-nor lose the common touch,If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,If all men count with you, but none too much:If you can fill the unforgiving minuteWith sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,And-which is more- you’ll be a Man, my son!

Here we are in Belgrade 08.06.98

Funny story from Tanja’s JournalThe not so white city. The city of beauracratic kancelarija. of women in short shorts. The city that pretends its in a hurry when in reality they’re really fighting their own depression, their own literacy. Everything exists as a matter of style.So i enter the gray district…or matter of subconscious. It is guarded by two shapely women in catsuits. One in black, one in white. Behind them you see fires burning in straight lines. The area has an iron gate surrounding…but the iron consists of a parallel series of bars. There are colorful creatures with colored wings that lay wrapped around the bars keeping watch over the district. Their bodies glisten brown in the sun.Once you slide through the front gate, the gatekeepers greet you with warm smiles, greetings of the Jack Nicholson type. As you walk past in parting the sneers, the chuckles echo in the distance. Envy, loathing follow until you reach a series of underground tunnels where young maidens in white cotton summer frocks have their hearts eaten out by man-eating vultures the size of a small VW bug. Beyond which emerge a series of lepers who pray to an icon some of them can’t even see since their eyes are white without the pupils. Their backs are hunched over, their eaten out by the dirt of the night.Nothing is, the stench in the tunnels resonates like the smell of dead animals when searching through the jungle. As light reaches the end of a tunnels, a series of birds fly in a circular motion, black crows, passing a worm from bird to the next, continuously until all birds die from exhaustion. The last bird carries the worm to the hollow of a tree and there it sits, fed by the hummingbirds.