Everyday Facts for an Expat in Rome (that would shock your family back in America)

Your refrigerator freezer must be defrosted by hand and has room for only one manual plastic tray of ice cubes (ten pieces of ice in total, three of which will leap to their death when you try and pry them out).

You are as expert and hanging laundry out to dry as your great-grandmother and have the washer woman hands to prove it.

You think it’s perfectly acceptable to plug in DEET poison into your electric wall socket so you are not eaten alive by helicopter sized mosquitoes.

You have a direct knowledge of just how many electric appliances can be plugged in and turned on in your apartment without causing a black-out.

You keep candles handy and hit save often on your PC for those visitors who don’t.

When visiting friends, it is considered socially acceptable to drool over their collection of English language books and then make pitiful sad faces about the meagre supply at your own apartment in hopes of being allowed to borrow one.

Your house keys look like something a jailer would have in those American Wild Wild West flicks.

You know exactly which buses and metros you have to buy a ticket for and which one’s you can fudge.

Your friend just got back from Philly and you secretly lust over her two blue push-up antiperspirants.

Shortly afterwards, you best friend from DC visits, bringing you your own stash of ziplock baggies, Dr. Bronner’s Peppermint Soap and a lifetime supply of Pappy Van Winkle Kentucky Bourbon and you have your friends over to celebrate your own good fortune (and to share).

You find a 20 minute walk, carrying, purse and laptop a relaxing way to start your day.

You find conversations such as “Do you want to be paid “in nero” perfectly acceptable conversations to have with a future employer.

Your butcher, fruit and vegetable boy, hardware store lady, and Chinese laundry workers all recognize you and greet you when they see you on the street.

Your cat understands you when you speak to her in two languages and your boyfriend doesn’t understand you in either.

You think riding a motorino is a right of passage and can’t wait to own one.

Not Until September

first days feel strangely out of body, if you can imagine. this i she
first time in my life that i haven't walked out one door with another
one immediately open (as in sustainable affordable income already
waiting for me). that means i am in this unknown zone and that has me
waking with 3 am panics so far that aren't very comfortable but
hopefully the catalyst i need to build up something. Have spoke to
two recent other university staffers and they are both saying, are you
looking now? (one needs someone, the other has inside contacts). a
piece of me...the job security seeking drone wants to say yes, but the
writer in me piped up last night and said...not at the moment,
talk to me again in September.....

felt good and scary.

To boldly go where no fool has gone before....

Writing....the final frontiere......

these are the voyages of the slightly off kilter on their quest for autonomy.

ok.... so statistics show that most people change jobs several times in their lifetime. Read...[change jobs, not change careers].

If I take a close gander at my resume (frighteningly schizophrenic in its diversity) I can count more post graduate jobs than I have fingers on both hands. And of these steps up the corporate ladder of success, there have been at least five different changes of direction or "Wow I want a do that!" life altering moments.

Each time in the past though, those nail biting, hair brained changes were backed up by healthier paychecks that thankfully came at regular intervals and thus allowed me to continue eating on a day to day basis.

This time though, in seeking to write full time, and without the safety net of a full time job elsewhere, I feel as if I am taking more risk than that a Ringling Brother's Circus clown that is about to be shot out of a cannon.

So how do I begin? How do I turn what has always been a rewarding part-time gig into a life mission? Am I really going to be able to tap the writer in me and turn her into a full time journalist or will my folks just continue to think I am about a half a bubble off plumb?

How does a gal go about ever finding her true calling? And even if I do, how do I keep these fanciful dreams from falling into unrepairable pieces at my feet?

I mean, the bills will still keep coming and it has always been my deep-set fear of failure that has fueled my adrenalin and helped to keep me an over-achiever in the workforce. Am I now being foolish, throwing all that away for the principle of being known as a writer? To work for me, and not always for money?

To not lose faith in my goal, and to also try and minimize some bad habits, I decided this "Under Construction" project needed the help of a professional coach. Today was my first appointment and I think I am going to like this guy. Maybe it is because I knew him first as a friend but he has a gentle and joking approach that helps me to laugh at my shortcomings without feeling so much like a num-nutz and I think if I can stick it out, he will be able to call me on my bad habits and I may be better for it.

Will keep you updated as we venture into unchartered waters.

One Door

A Sicilian proverb says:

" Si chiuri na porta, si rapi un purticatu"

Italian translation:

" Si chiude una porta , si apre un portone"

We have a very similar expression in English but these take it one inspiring step better. I hope its true.

The title on my business card now officially reads Freelance Writer and Journalist. Guess I really will have to start paying attention to my spelling and grammar if I want to eat two times a day.

To Whom it May Concern in the Lofty Halls of Academia

"Our character...is an omen of our destiny, and the more integrity we have and keep, the simpler and nobler that destiny is likely to be."

George Santayana (1863 - 1952),

I am writing to you to submit my resignation from “omit university name here for fear of liable” and from my position as Academic Coordinator and Coordinator of New Student Programming effective May 19th 2007.

I am resigning because I have tried and failed to reconcile my conscience with my ability to represent both students and faculty in a satisfactory manner under the constraints of this administration.

Service at this university should have been a dream job, and when I accepted this position I was pleased to be paid to understand the needs of American collegiate students studying in other cultures. Working with others and developing new initiatives has always been my forte. To be able to seek out potential academic projects, develop them and then watch them prosper sounded like the ideal job to me. With a glad heart, I started this position thinking that while it wouldn’t make me rich, it would cement my position in the Italian community and give me a broader knowledge of its academia and institutional business models. I thought it would also give me the opportunity to broaden my writing styles, the most powerful weapon in my professional arsenal.

As only my second opportunity to work in academia, and the first under an Italian business model, it was perhaps naive (and inevitable) that during the initial months that passed I would become more sophisticated and cynical about the narrow and misguided bureaucratic motives institutions sometimes draw upon to shape academic and administrative policies. Human nature is what it is, and I while in previous positions I have been promoted for understanding human nature and harnessing it to motivate people to work with synergy together, here I was too often bluntly told “sit down, do your job, and keep your mouth closed”.

The decisions that I have been ordered to advance are incompatible not only with my own personal integrity but all to frequently with western academic standards in general and as a consequence, I have been unable to protect the very professors and students I was ultimately tasked to serve.

In our fervent pursuit of opening two new campus utilizing too few and often underpaid, underqualified and overworked staff, we have risked to squander our most valuable resource (quality educators) and to eventually lose the very students which are the university’s lifeblood and key to our financial and educational success. Quality education and competent management of academics should be the core foundation of a university’s operating plan, but with the current administrative model in place, we have risked to dismantle brick by brick, the very programs we claim we are trying to build . In doing so, we may also irreparably damage an international reputation that took the founder thirty years to create.

And while I am not so idealistic as to think that the sacrifice of trusted competent faculty and staff never occurs or is never administratively unavoidable, the level of self interest at the expense of academics has often times left me speechless. I realize that bureaucracy and misguided but well intentioned policymaking is nothing new, and certainly not unique to study-abroad institutions of this size and organizational layout, but rather than take responsibility for the difficulties created, we continue to burn through human resources or apply them inappropriately in a disorderly way that breeds low moral and disharmony.

In twenty years of employment I have not seen such systematic distortion of staff resource management or an institution of this size founder in its own self inflicted morass.

For this reason, I think its time that I step aside….better to see if someone else is able to enact the positive change that as much as I wanted and tried, I have been unable to do…