5 Reasons to Know: Tea Gergedava, Master's Student, Special Studies Program

There was always a pause when students walked into the Department of Foreign Relations at Tbilisi State University in Georgia, a former republic of the Soviet Union, and asked to speak to the director. At 26, Tea Gergedava looked like just another student, not a high-ranking administrator running an elite department in the country's oldest university. It wasn't long before they knew they had found an ally in Gergedava -- as a recent graduate, she "knew their slang" and could share her personal experience with the classes they were considering. Now, after a year at Harvard, Gergedava is set to return to her homeland to give back. "When you are living in a peaceful prosperous state, you have only a vague understanding of what it means to be a responsible citizen, but if you are living in tiny Georgia, squeezed between the Russian Federation and Turkey, and your country's territory is being bombed and villages annihilated, you realize that it's time to pay your share of the citizenship in any way you can."

1. Despite her country's troubles, including separatist conflicts, corruption, and last summer's brief war with Russia, she remains optimistic. "I've seen crowds ready to sacrifice anything they could to make Georgia work as an independent, democratic state."

2. Although technically on leave from her job for a year, she continues to oversee her university's involvement in a European-wide student exchange program called Erasmus.

3. This is her third master's degree. The others, both from Tbilisi State, were in social sciences and American studies. She has also studied in Turkey, Austria, and India.

4. During her year studying in Istanbul, she became fluent in Turkish. At Harvard, she kept up with the language by attending weekly university-sponsored "language tables." "It gave me a chance to meet others I might not otherwise meet and practice my Turkish. It's a beautiful language -- very emotional and melodic."

5. Asked what she plans to bring back to young Georgians, she says, "I have experiences that I can share and stories to tell. I can also prove to them that there is no goal too distant."


Photo by Martha Stewart