The fabulous life of….

…an international student recruiter is not as “glamorous” as most people may initially think. Many times when I’m introduced to someone, they often ask what I do for a living, and I’m usually pretty honest and I explain to them that I manage international student recruitment in the Americas. Instantly I get a positive response such as: “Wow, that must mean you travel all the time - what an exciting job!” Which is true on both counts – I do travel quite frequently, more so than I could have ever imagined, and it truly is an exciting job. That said most folks are probably conjuring up images of first-class flights, beautiful hotels and exotic locations, which isn’t entirely the most accurate picture of my life in international recruitment.

I must admit, however, that I have travelled to my share of exciting locations, and had it not been for my current career, I don’t think I would have so frequently visited Mexico City (at least 6 times in three years), or so comfortably to beautiful (and often expensive) locations like Istanbul, Oslo, Hong Kong, and London. I’ve also seen more of Central and South America (the “motherland”) now than previously. Growing up, all of my assumptions about South America were based on my family visits to Peru, but it is certainly a much more diverse region when you begin visiting places like Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay. South America is truly an incredible region with a diversity of people, climates, food, politics and socio-economic levels.

I’ll probably only recount the more glamorous bits on this blog because I really don’t want to bore you with the banal and mundane details of international travel, and I’m pretty sure SmallTime is traveling first-class all the way anyway. S/he seems pretty comfortable in there and probably is getting much more sleep than I.

But just to dispel the myths, and so that you feel a little empathy the next time you encounter my colleagues in international student recruitment, I must iterate that the work days are long, the hotels are not always so glamorous (I remember the lights going out when I was in the shower in the Mexico one time), there is little room for error or illness, and it gets a little lonely sometimes, especially if you’re traveling by yourself and not with a group of colleagues (which is more the norm – this trip is more the exception).

I have had my fair share of “exotic” locations like Boise, ID, Eugene, OR, and Missoula, MT! I have traversed the entire state of Ohio from bottom to top (twice!), and spent many hours along the I5 highway in Washington State (have you been to Arlington, Oak Harbor or Mount Vernon? Me too!) And this is certainly not a complaint. I have good memories of all of these places and everywhere I have visited I have always encountered amiable people with wonderful stories about their students, their schools, their communities and much more.

So in essence, maybe folks are correct when they express that my job must be pretty exciting. When else would you visit a school then be whisked away by its College Counsellor/Anthropologist in Mexico City, stop along the speeding Perifico (a busy N/S 5-lane avenue traversing Mexico City) to offer your fire extinguisher to a car on fire then spend the rest of the afternoon with her at the Museum of Anthropology? And where else but in Central and South America would parents of students be waiting until late hours at the airport to greet you and send back gifts for your own family that they sometimes have not ever met!

SmallTime’s adventures in Costa Rica have so far included a brief tour of the city as we travelled between school visits. We learned that Costa Rica abolished its army in 1948 and has since been re-directing these funds to education and health care. Costa Rica has the lowest illiteracy rate of all Central/South American countries at 4%, and is home to Nobel Peace Prize laureate Oscar Arias. He achieved this for his negotiation of a peace settlement with the Sandinistas – he invited all of the presidents of Central America to a beach resort, including the Sandinista leader, and he held the entire conference at the beach in their bathing suits! – You can’t really hide anything from anyone at that kind of a conference! Oscar Arias, much to his credit, has recently been re-elected President of Costa Rica.

We left San Jose on Tuesday, March 22 and I meant to post this then as we bid farewell to Costa Rica; however, we started our day at 6am, hosted three presentations to three different groups of students, met more than 80 students at the proceeding fair, then headed to the airport where we flew to Quito – arriving at about 11pm, I fell asleep at midnight, then awoke at 6am to visit another school where we hosted a fair for more than 180 students, I did one-on-one interviews with 7 students, then headed to the airport and boarded a plane to Lima, where we landed at about 8pm.

By the time we stopped it was Thursday and we have done little more than visit two more schools, host three more fairs, visit with Embassy officials and attend a reception hosted by the Canadian Embassy.

So maybe it isn’t so glamorous, but it certainly is fabulous….

I’m cheating a little, because I didn’t really have any time to myself in Costa Rica, but on last year’s trip I was able to wake up a little earlier in the day (SmallTime has really been sleeping in lately), so that I could spend a nice hour by the pool before our first meeting. I took this photo on last year’s trip to commemorate the hour I had to myself. So later this summer when I can no longer see my feet past my belly, this picture will serve as a reminder of what they looked like!