Interview Tomorrow

Tomorrow morining is my interview for the summer resident adviser position in Florence. I'm not even nervous about the interview, I'm just excited to talk about living and studying in Italy.

This isn't the first time that I've thought about working for a study abroad company. When I was an exchange student in Florence and my year was coming to an end, I tried to come up with some schemes to stay in Italy. One of my ideas was to work for a study abroad company. It seemed like the perfect job because it would be a real job in a foreign country (as opposed to working illegally in the leather market, waiting tables or teaching—all things that I have done). At the time I wasn’t able to find any opening that would allow me to stay in Italy and work after my exchange ended.

Since then I’ve become distracted by a lot of other things but I still think about the idea of working for a study abroad company. Living in Florence and being the director of the program would be an ideal job for me. I’ve looked at a lot of bios for people working for various companies and it seems like most of them have studied abroad, speak at least one other language fluently, and have several experiences working abroad. A lot have also studied international education and have either a masters or a PhD.

I think I’m definitely on my way to having a lot of those qualifications having studied abroad, been an exchange student, I have a BA in Italian and speak fairly fluently, I taught English in Italy for a year and have spent a couple of summers working in Greece. I’m working on my Masters in Teaching English as a Second Language. I would also love to study International Education or International Relations or something like that. (I’ve seriously thought about going to the School for International Training). I’m not 100% sure that this is my ultimate career goal; there are still so many things that I would consider doing. I’m definitely keeping it as an option though. This summer I may have the chance to take another step in this direction.

So, not only am I excited about the chance to go back to Italy for the summer but I really think that this could be a stepping stone to becoming a director if that is what I choose to do. I would also have a chance to see how the organization works and if it is really something that I want to do.

Wish me luck tomorrow.