Countdown Part 2- "My Dream Life as a UPS Driver" (M)

When I was a student at Santa Barbara, I had a professor who taught one of the last pre-requisite classes to get into the Business Economics major. As a result, he was constantly inundated with students on the borderline in terms of minimum grade requirements begging to have their grade raised.

Frustrated at all the students pleading with him year after year with story after story, he decided to make a statement in front of our class of 250 students.

“I was coming home from a long day of work in which everything had gone wrong. I was pissed off, in a bad mood, stressed out after missing the latest deadline, and exhausted after all the long hours. To make matters worse, I am stuck in deadlock traffic and going nowhere. As I glance around, I notice a UPS driver pulled up alongside me. He has his music playing, singing along with a smile on his face. His upbeat mannerisms are a stark contract to the scowl imprinted on my face. His only worry is that a package may get delayed or damaged, whereas I have the lawyers, bankers, and company management pushing the weight of the world onto my shoulders.

The point is, not everyone is meant for the business world. If you cannot score high enough on these exams, than maybe this just is not the profession for you, maybe you should consider becoming a UPS driver. It is probably a better life you would lead.”

At the time, I remember being horrified about how cruel he was to the students who so desperately wanted to get into the major but were just so bluntly told they were not smart enough to get in.

Of course now I realize, that there really is no such thing as being smart or not (well, maybe not so black and white). We are simply better at some things and not so great at others…you should have heard the laughter of the kids in Costa Rica at my pathetic attempt to draw stick picture figures playing sports when teaching them English.

And now, I also finally understand what my professor meant. To be honest, the UPS driver probably does have a better life. But the irony is that if it is so much better, then why didn’t he become a UPS driver, or why don’t we all???

It is that thing inside of you that drives you, pushes you as hard as you can until you can go no more. Not everyone has it, and it is not always a good thing.

Sometimes I wish I were the UPS driver, or better yet, the type of girl who just goes out and finds herself a nice rich man to take care of her (nothing wrong with that ladies!), but I am not.

I am sitting on my bed, surrounded by clothes, boxes, bags, and just random junk. People are coming tomorrow to take all my bedroom furniture, bookshelves, and cabinets. I will be sleeping the next week on my couch until someone takes that too, and then it is the floor. I need to be out of my apartment September 28 and have a one-way ticket from Zürich to London on September 29. But delays in my visa may cause me to get stuck in Switzerland for some extra time homeless. It is impossible to know how quickly the process will go. I am once again reducing all of my possessions to a few suitcases trying so hard not to look back.

Living life so up in the air, not knowing what is going to happen, trying to get everything organized all on your own (which Switzerland makes about 1000x more difficult) is exhausting, frustrating, and well, just plain difficult. But this is all self-inflicted. I chose to live my life like this. And sometimes I wish and think to myself, why can’t I be that UPS driver? But at the end of the day, (Keith you would be so proud that statement), you have to accept who you are and go with it. I have, and here I go again…

A Global Generation (SS)

I am typing out another email, trying to catch up from the backlog of emails which accumulated while I was in London for the weekend staying in the flat of a friend whom I had met while on holiday in Mexico last January but who I unfortunately missed this trip up as she was out of town in Chicago that weekend for a bachelorette party.

”Totally random, and I don’t know if you remember me as we have only met a couple of times a long time ago, but I am a Pi Phi UC Santa Barbara alumni and a friend of Kyle’s. I am currently living in Zürich, Switzerland but will be moving to London in a few weeks so was just up there for the weekend looking at some flats. Kyle (whom I had not seen for 5 years but hung out with in London) mentioned you were in Korea teaching English right now? I have a good friend from Texas whom I met while volunteering in Costa Rica thinking of going to Korea to teach English as well. Would you mind providing some advice?”

I then shoot a quick note to the guy on the plane I met on my trip to London last Friday who was ironically moving from London to Switzerland and me from Switzerland to London and so we were swapping advice, and then back to another friend, who lives in Pennsylvania, whom I met in Costa Rica who is looking for an internship in New York at a Big 4 Firm, then emailed a bunch of people in San Francisco and NY looking for contacts.

My Blackberry beeps, message from a friend in SF who was letting me know that a friend of hers was in London for the month working and maybe we should meet for a drink. I respond that I am back in Zürich, so I will miss the chance to meet her, but turns out she has another friend who is working in London for a few months but goes to Zürich a lot for work and copies her friend. She contacts me, and we schedule a dinner for next Wednesday in Zürich. Monday I have dinner with my Dad in Zürich as he is in town also for work for a couple of days. I then get an instant message from a former co-worker from our Amsterdam office who is now working in Michigan asking me if I will be making it to Oktoberfest in Münich this year. No, I have to move to London that weekend…so sad I cannot make it! I then get another instant message from a co-worker who just moved from Berlin to Moscow asking me the same Q. So sad I will be missing everyone! What awful timing.

And so the day goes on as like all my days,..and suddenly I look back at the flood of emails coming in from all over the world, I mean, we truly are the global generation.

Defining Moments within my Swiss Experience (SS) Part 1- "The Fat American"

I have learned and grown a lot during my short 2 years in Switzerland. This has been one rollercoaster of an experience and the following capture a few of those defining moments in my life, whether comical, difficult, or just a lesson learned.

While I was hired out of the Zürich office, I spent most of my time working in the Basel office, which, albeit the long commute, I quite enjoyed as I really like the people and environment there. Upon my first day, the Syngenta team was excited to take me out to lunch. After declining an invitation to the recently opened Burger King (which I thought was a joke, but later found out the partner was serious), me, one of the partners, and 2 Senior Managers went out to lunch. During lunch one colleague turned to me and said,

“Huh, you are not quite what we expected.” – Swiss colleagues
“Really, how so?” -me
“Well, you are American…we expected you would be fat.”

Oh, and so the stereotype goes…sadly it is quite true.

The World Is My Playground (R)

I have come to the conclusion that the world is like one big playground for adults..I mean, we never really do grow up do we? We get jobs, like me who dresses up in a black suit smartly complemented with a grim face as if it were a Halloween costume and goes off to work to spend my day typing madly in front of a laptop in a stuffy room.

Long gone are the glorious days of a school bell to indicate the end of the day..we end the day when you simply can go on no more. So why do we do it?

Because like recess was play time when you were a kid and you stared longingly at the clock waiting for the next one, vacation is an adult’s recess. But this time, instead of running for the balls to start up a competitive game of 4 square, I pack up my bags to go off on my next adventure.

However, when swinging through the world, sometimes you are pushed so hard, you fall off and get scraped up and bruised. But you just get back up, and know that this time, you need to hold tighter. After all, what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger.