Here's $22,000. Now go explore the world

Instead of fretting about the job market or flipping through graduate-school catalogs, Wellesley College senior Diane Morgan has been lining up sailboats to take her on a year-long tour.

Senior Michael Abel at Grinnell College, meanwhile, has been pondering where he will stay during his five-country study of the cultural differences in Little League.

The adventurous duo are among 60 recent recipients of the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. The little-known but prestigious program entrusts new college graduates with $22,000, and sends them off into the world for a year to pursue their passions.

"My parents and friends can't believe I'm doing this; I can't believe it," says Ms. Morgan, a New Jersey native with an unabashed fondness for traditional sailing vessels.

Starting in August, she'll be sailing aboard replicas of ancient tall ships in Scandinavia, Holland, Polynesia, and a region known as Phoenicia in the eastern Mediterranean. The plan is to "immerse myself in shipboard life ... and explore the navigational tools of different vessels," says the international-studies major.

"The program was basically like, here, have some money and go follow your dreams," Morgan says.

It's truly almost that easy. The catches are few: fellows can't return to the United States during the year, nor can they affiliate with formal institutions.

The latter provision is to make sure students are free to follow up on serendipitous possibilities, and also learn a bit about self-reliance and gumption. Says executive director Norv Brasch, "Diane's project to me is classical Watson, where the going is the doing."

Mr. Brasch admits the projects are not all academic, but they certainly demand much analysis. The Watson year, he says, is neither a time of goofing off nor a next step on a specific career track per se, but rather a time for "disciplined diversion." The Providence-based foundation, established in 1968 by the children of IBM founder Thomas J. Watson, prides itself on its hands-off approach, which allows students to take stock of themselves and develop a more informed sense of international concern.

And while the fellowship may be decidedly eccentric, some consider it as desirable as the prestigious Rhodes scholarship. Eligibility is limited to graduating seniors from a group of 50 liberal-arts colleges that are top-ranking but small enough to allow for professors to know students personally.

Even then it's competitive. Last fall about 1,000 students applied. The participating schools first select about three applicants to nominate; the foundation then interviews students and winnows the list to 60. Fellows are chosen based on character, potential leadership, curiosity about the world, and most important, an insatiable desire to learn about the topic they propose.

The research topics for this year's fellows are a wild mix, including blacksmithing, blind organists, martial arts, and poetry in women's prisons.

For Mr. Abel, it's the intrigue of Little League.

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