The second time is always a charm, or at least it was for GW graduate Donald Goodson.

Goodson, who graduated from GW in 2005 with a bachelor’s degree in international affairs, spent his years in college working hard to study the African continent. When he applied in his senior year for the Fulbright scholarship, an exclusive program that provides money for specialized research, he was turned down.

But despite the harsh rejection of not even making it past the first round of applicants, Goodson trudged on with his African interests and was named one of this year’s recipients of the prestigious Fulbright scholarship.

After graduating from GW, Goodson went on to pursue a two-year graduate degree from Oxford University in England.

Unlike the first run at the Fulbright, Oxford did decide to give Goodson a grant and sent him to South Africa in 2006. Goodson followed up shortly thereafter with another trip, this time as an intern for the U.S. State Department, spending his summer at the U.S. embassy in Botswana.

“When I applied the second time I felt a bit more confident about my application,” Goodson wrote.

“I knew much more about the region than I did before and could confidently speak about my growing knowledge.”

Goodson may have been surprised by his award, but his friends and professors certainly were not.

“Don Goodson gets more done by 10 a.m. than most people do all day,” his friend Casey Wasserman wrote in an e-mail.

Wasserman, who graduated from GW in 2005, referred to Goodson as the hardest worker she knows.

“Over the course of his time at GW, Don worked at soup kitchens, undersourced D.C. public schools and international adoption agencies when he wasn’t already interning or working elsewhere,” Wasserman said.

While at GW, Goodson also managed to find the time to make a memorable impression on his professors as well.

Professor Elizabeth Chacko encountered Goodson in her upper-level class on population geography in the spring semester of 2003.

“Don has the distinction of being the only student to whom I said, even before he asked, ‘Young man, if you ever want a letter of recommendation I’d be delighted to write one for you,'” Chacko wrote in an e-mail.

The Fulbright scholarship was initiated in 1946 by Senator J. William Fulbright, who proposed a bill to Congress that would set aside money to give to students and others who could benefit from conducting research.

In the past 60 years, more than 190,000 students have received this scholarship from all over the world. Every year, about 1,300 students from the United States are awarded the scholarship by a committee that is hand-selected by the president.

These students have the opportunity to study and research in more than 140 countries for a full academic year.

Goodson was one of two GW graduates who were awarded the scholarship this year. Nicole Fox, a 2007 GW graduate, will travel to the Philippines, where she will study at the University of the Philippines College of Public Health, researching for the Philippine Measles Elimination Program.

As a recipient of the scholarship, Goodson will be living in South Africa and is entitled to round-trip airfare, insurance, housing and living stipends as well as a small research allowance.

Over the course of 10 months, Goodson said he plans to research how South Africans perceive their identity as a regional player and the relationship between the U.S. and South Africa since the end of apartheid.