{"id":19405,"date":"2023-02-14T08:08:00","date_gmt":"2023-02-14T08:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/160-news\/?p=19405"},"modified":"2026-04-16T21:33:01","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T21:33:01","slug":"how-local-government-and-language-create-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/2023\/02\/how-local-government-and-language-create-community\/","title":{"rendered":"How Local Government and Language Create Community"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Landed is an ongoing series where we ask recent graduates how things are going post-graduation. Here, Dan Szetela &#8217;19 shares his path since graduation. Reporting by Dennis Krolevich &#8217;26<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Dan Szetela &#8217;19<br>Political Science, Russian Studies<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Acton, Mass.<br>Currently working at the American Councils for International Education in Almaty, Kazakhstan<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><b>Last three things you did before your current role:<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Single-staffer legislative aid for Massachusetts statehouse\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Fulbright in Petrozavodsk, Russia<\/span><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Internship for Keith Ellison campaign for attorney general (MN)<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><b>What did you learn?<br><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">All this work has made me realize that I want to build community, whether it\u2019s on an international level of citizen diplomacy or on a local level, to make sure that people have access to services, housing, transportation, etc. It was very interesting to work with my own state representative as well as intern at the Minnesota State Senate while at Macalester. Both of these experiences made me appreciate and realize the power of state government to serve people. In addition, my experience in Petrozavodsk and here in Kazakhstan have helped me live independently in a foreign country, where I know the language but am not necessarily fluent in it nor aware of all the customs. It\u2019s really about being able to adapt to a life that is different from what I am used to and requires operating in a different language.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignleft wp-image-19427 size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"696\" src=\"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/160-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/653\/2023\/02\/Dan-Kyrgyzstan-photo-3-1024x696.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-19427\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/653\/2023\/02\/Dan-Kyrgyzstan-photo-3-1024x696.jpg 1024w,  https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/653\/2023\/02\/Dan-Kyrgyzstan-photo-3-300x204.jpg 300w,  https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/653\/2023\/02\/Dan-Kyrgyzstan-photo-3-768x522.jpg 768w,  https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/653\/2023\/02\/Dan-Kyrgyzstan-photo-3-1536x1044.jpg 1536w,  https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/653\/2023\/02\/Dan-Kyrgyzstan-photo-3-2048x1392.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Dan met an expert eagle hunter, who demonstrated his craft in Bokonbayevo.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><b>I never thought when I was a first year that\u2026<br><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">I\u2019d travel and see new places and make friends all over the world.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">My first-year course was Contemporary Mongolia. We really got into Mongol culture and learned about one of the main drinks in Mongolia, kumis (fermented mare\u2019s milk). If you had told me that five to six years from that point I would be drinking real kumis in Kazakhstan, I would not have believed you.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><b>What has surprised you since graduation?<br><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">I like being in the workforce. I like being on a nine-to-five schedule. Something that surprised me was how helpful it\u2019s been to have free time. I wrote and released an album last year because I had free time outside of work to actually focus on things like music. I\u2019ve also had the opportunity to travel.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><b>Advice for current students<br><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Try to get more comfortable with reaching out to connections because people are happy to talk to you, especially if you aren\u2019t demanding something from them and you\u2019re just interested in what they\u2019re doing. It might seem scary, but it does work. Secondly, pursue your interests as much as possible because it will help you in weird and interesting ways.<\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A recent grad who lives and works in Kazakhstan shares his experience<\/p>","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":19407,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","mediatype-articles"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"fields":{"article_type":[8],"flickr_photoset_id":"","youtube_id":"","square_thumbnail":false,"press_photos":false,"story_title":"","story_caption":"","rotations":false,"maps":false,"marker_title":"","marker_text":"","geographic_location":false,"feature_embed":"","custom_link_url":"","news_icon_name":"","image_options":false,"main_feature_story":"","custom_image":false,"custom_feature_title":"","custom_feature_caption":"","custom_markup":"","custom_markup_link":"","custom_markup_title":"","custom_markup_caption":"","byline":"","post_thumbnail_style":"default","press_downloads":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19405"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30957,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19405\/revisions\/30957"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}