ALLISON BEHRINGER

Hometown: Annapolis, Maryland

PiA fellowship position: 6th grade English teacher at Sriserm School in Nan, Thailand

University: BA Princeton University

Current city: Brooklyn, New York

Dream vacation in Asia: Back to Nan, Thailand!

Tell us about your PiA experience.

I was one of four teaching Fellows at a primary school in Nan, Thailand. The students were creative, hilarious, smart and thoughtful. Nan sits in a valley, along a river, surrounded by mountains and I spent many afternoons going for runs along the river and past rice paddies. Most nights, we’d go out to dinner, spend 1-2 USD, and eat the most delicious food (my increased spice tolerance was hard fought, but so worth it). I loved learning the Thai words for fruits and vegetables and being able to make my market purchases without English. Our boss lent the four of us one-speed bicycles, so we rode around town on our rainbow bikes. It was a very small town. Once, when I left my phone at a noodle shop, I came in to school the next morning to find it sitting on my desk. We were also fortunate because the Fellows before us had become friends with some Thai people in Nan who welcomed us into their friend circle. They taught me that beer is best served over ice on a hot night.

What was a memorable experience you had on PiA?

What are you up to now?

I host and produce a documentary podcast called Bodies. Each episode is one woman’s journey to solve a mystery about her body. It combines intimate, nuanced storytelling with health reporting to uncover the layers that affect women’s health, like racism, patriarchy, and capitalism. This inspiration for the project and the first episode is my own experience with a medical mystery. The first season came out last summer (listen wherever you get your podcasts!) and I’m currently working on season 2, set to publish in spring 2020.

How did your PiA experience influence your life path?

How did your PiA experience influence your life path?

By the end of my PiA experience, it became clear that I had stumbled into a lifelong commitment to education and a global perspective of service. I have continued to invest in my connection to Asia, having had the opportunity to work in China and Vietnam since my PiA fellowship, and even visited Pattaya in 2016. PiA was a journey into my own mind through the exploration of the outside world, and has been the single most transformative learning experience in helping me to understand who I wanted to become, what I wanted to do with my life, and why. The process of service taught me that sometimes the best way to do for yourself, is to do the best that you can for others.

What’s next for you?

I’m excited to have recently joined the PiA Board of Trustees! In this role, I’m looking forward to working with the PiA family to develop more opportunities for fellows and to help expand alumni engagement.

At the end of every school year at Sriserm, there’s a day-long festival of performances and dances. It’s the job of the English teachers to teach the students a song and choreograph a dance (the 2013 lineup included Robyn and Miley Cyrus). The 6th graders always did a play and so we put on an abridged Wizard of Oz. It was remarkable the way that the students owned the production and took the lead in putting their show together.

After PiA, I spent another year teaching (high school English in NYC), then the next year doing women’s health work in India and then a short documentary studies program. During those three post-college years, the “what are you going to do with your life?” question felt big and scary and the things that I was doing felt random and disconnected. It’s only now when I look back at those experiences, do I see the way that they connect and form a clear - albeit meandering - path to where I am today, doing audio documentary storytelling. PiA taught me to embrace the unknown, get comfortable with ambiguity, and to constantly interrogate the way that I see the world. I think those are the skills and mindsets that have carried me forward.

What was something important you gained from PiA?

Friendship! Some of my most treasured friends are from PiA.

What advice do you have for current PiAers?

Soak it all in! Don’t worry about what you’re going to do next! (I promise, it will work out.) Learn and observe the practice of speaking quietly! Stay humble!

What’s next for you?

I’m focused on producing the second season of Bodies and very excited for the stories that we have in the works!