Partner Employment

As I read, “once you get on that plane and leave the US, your professional career is over” in a cautionary tale blog entry about EFM employment, I cringed. This, I have to admit, is my deepest fear right out there, in the real world, exposed. My professional career is over? Really, damn, I feel like I barely started…at 4 AM as I can’t sleep it seems even scarier. It is dark outside and the post about employment options that I was planning to re-read and publish tomorrow morning seems much more upbeat than I am feeling at the moment.  This quote ranks towards the top of the “shudder” list along with a senior staffer at my old consulting firm telling me that I was unqualified to work in the Indian market with the exception of “teaching English to businessmen and writing press releases for an Indian firm interested in breaking into the US market,” whoa really? There is no place in the Indian market I can use my international economics degree, hard to believe right?

Those are words which are much more powerful at 4 AM than they are in daylight hours, when I feel much more confident about my abilities to forge my own way. During one of our Shabbat dinners, a friend, with whom I spent the last two years studying in one of the top and toughest international economics programs in the country suggested that “well if you can’t find a job, India is I hear a great place to start a family.” While appreciate all the time taken to offer me sage advice, I will make that rather important decision with my own husband. 

My friend and I went to the same grad program, took identical classes and the difference between the two of us? He was one of the very few of my classmates that passed the oral part of the Foreign Service exam. For one reason or other, some of the smartest people in my grad program and I did not pass the oral assessment stage, at which point I decided to strike out on my own – since besides acquiring a number of stellar analytical, writing and quantitative skills, what SAIS taught me is that this world is a big place with lots of options. My friend also sent a calendar that the Chennai EFM husbands put together outlining their daily pursuits, because he thought it was really funny. 

EFM unemployment is not a joke. Out of a high 40^th percentile, the exact figure escapes me, of EMFs that want to work, only 25 % actually find employment. The overwhelming majority work at US missions abroad, while a much smaller percentage works in the local economy, bi-lateral employment agreements permitting, while an even smaller group telecommutes and runs online businesses from their homes. Local economy employment requires work permits, work permits take time. 

I seemingly achieved the impossible; I got a job offer to work in a local office of an American firm. I worked really hard to find the said job. Since August of last year, I have been talking to just about anyone that would listen that I was moving to India and I was interested in finding local professional employment offside the US mission. Personally, I feel that the local mission does not currently offer employment that fits my professional goals. I talked to friends, family, and former classmates asking for contacts and advice. My hard work paid off, I got an offer through an alumni contact. I feel incredibly lucky and grateful to the alumni and co-worker that helped me make that happen. I am in a privileged position, but I’ll leave you with this (as I hope to get back to sleep); spouse and partner employment ranks towards the top of concerns of those considering and entering the Foreign Service. Although one of the reasons that you see so many single income families in the Foreign Service (meaning one partner is in the FS the other takes care of the family) this is the only government service where you can afford to have a stay at home partner, but the other reason is that it extremely difficult to have two professional careers with one of them within the FS. Ok, I said my piece, time to get off the soapbox, and wake up confident that in fact the job offer will be there tomorrow and when I get my work permit from the Indian government. Good night and thanks for listening.

Transition

I am joining the blogging world, when the novelty of blogging has worn off and it is no longer considered unusual. I am a bit of reluctant blogger, but understanding the realities of my new-found path, I feel that this is the most efficient way to keep friends and family up to date on our adventures in this big wide world. I am also acceding to demands of a dear friend, valued colleague, and classmate K. Lovely K. has been begging me to start a blog prior to departing from the US, so that she can live vicariously through me, from the safety of her web-comic decorated cubicle. I anticipate a journey filled with lots of social awkwardness, nerdy glory, cultural firsts, commentary and of course large numbers of linguistic trial and error. As always, hilarity ensues.

Incidentally, today is an interesting day for my first post. My contract with a small and dynamic international consulting firm ends tomorrow. After I graduated from the best grad school on the planet – an Ode to SAIS post will hit the virtual presses soon – I looked for contract work as my days in DC were numbered due to the vagaries of my husband’s new career. I succeeded in finding coveted contract work through an amazing network of SAIS alumni. I think Shakespeare put it best – “parting is such sweet sorrow.” For the last seven months I performed the type of research, analysis, and writing that I got used to doing at SAIS as a paid contractor. I performed country risk analysis, market entry research, economic overviews, regulatory, legislative, and demand analysis. This was an amazing opportunity in a place where I felt intellectually challenged, contributed and learned a great deal. I made friends, developed professional contacts and had a great time completing my assignments. 

Alas, I also wrestled with the tentative hope of getting a spot in a language class prior to our departure. Thus, I am leaving to take advantage of a wonderful opportunity afforded to partners of Foreign Service officers, the coveted language course.  Although, I will miss my job and especially my friend K, I am also excited to start learning a new language! So for those that don’t know me, I am kind of a language nerd and besides English, speak Russian, Arabic, Hebrew, Ukrainian, as well as survival Spanish and Italian. With the exception of English, I will not use any of my language skills at our post. To rectify this omission I will start Tamil language class, a rather difficult language hailing from the Dravidian language family spoken by our future neighbors. Speaking Tamil is not an absolute necessity for where I end up working and most people that attended secondary school speak English. Learning Tamil will not only help me get around independently, it will also help me learn more about the place that we will call home for the next few years. I wish to respect our hosts by speaking to them in Tamil and hope not insult Tamil speakers by mangling their language - let’s be honest – mangling Tamil is the most likely outcome.

So Tamil – new alphabet, words made up of an average of 20 syllables, sparse punctuation, flashcards, and memorization – here I come!