In country, though, every success and back-step hits you right in the gut. Your life feels like a series of wins and losses. It’s hard to have any sense of overall progress when you just had a terrible meeting with the Ministry of Agriculture and your training just got cancelled. On the other hand, when things are going well, you’re so full of energy and creativity and passion you can push your work to whole new levels of impact.

I attended a reception last night for the launch of Public Diplomacy magazine, published by the USC Center on Public Diplomacy. It was quite a good networking event actually, which I can admit was at least partly because they served sushi and had something like seven microbrews to choose from at the bar.

I encourage you to check out PD the magazine, which features thought-provoking essays on the broad and important topic of public diplomacy, one that certainly encompasses the work we do in international education, exchange, and development. [Also, if you are looking at grad programs, you might be interested in the USC Master's in Public Diplomacy program, now in its third year of existence.]

This 2^nd forum in a series on Defense, Development, and Diplomacy will look at the proposed Cabinet-level development agency, and the new pathways the Obama administration might pursue to increase collaboration and cooperation between the Development community and the various arms of the U.S. foreign policy establishment. What are the right solutions to the bureaucratic roadblocks? How could these changes ultimately lead to better structures and better-implemented foreign policy? What are the challenges in appropriating more money in Congress for USAID?

The forum has a number of sponsors, including the Alliance for Peacebuilding, headed by a good friend of Sherry’s and NCIV’s, Chic Dambach.

The event is from 9:00 to 10:30 tomorrow morning in the Nitze Building at SAIS, 1740 Massachusetts Avenue in DC. RSVP is required by close of business today (cprfnewsletter@sfcg.org).

So here we find ourselves, celebrating the inauguration of President Obama, a farsighted leader who has inspired millions of young Americans with his call to service. We also find ourselves on the threshold of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s new diplomatic initiative, the exercise of “smart power” in a multifaceted effort to reclaim our moral and political integrity in the eyes of the world. The obvious equation seems written in neon: “Call to service” plus “smart power” equals Peace Corps.

Dollar for dollar, you cannot get a more reliable, cost-effective answer than the Peace Corps when the challenge is to win hearts and minds around the globe.

PS—Apologies for a few days of no posts, but like Sherry had been earlier this month, I’ve been “flat out” this week with the Alliance’s big event, an advocacy day in which our members descend on Capitol Hill to lobby their Members of Congress. I’ll post more this weekend/next week, but will also try to bang out a few latent posts now.

Anyhow, some of the topics covered include:

How do these concepts of career building relate specifically to the fields of international education and exchange?

I have to admit I felt a little sheepish that this was the first question, as you’d think we would have already covered that in a session on international careers. But as Sherry then emphasized, the career concepts that we discuss in Working World, while typically tailored for international careers, could be applied to careers in most any fields. But we did then mention a few things that careers seekers in these fields need to keep in mind that are particular to the IR world, including:

–While we all got into this work because of our love of travel and ideally want to have international travel as a part of our jobs, those jobs are tough to come by. But just because a job doesn’t have international travel doesn’t mean it’s not a solid building block for your international career.

–Sherry’s admonition that career seekers think about “how do you want to spend your days?” takes on particular importance when considering an international career. A career as a Foreign Service officer may sound intriguing and sexy on the surface, but is a life on the move, transplanting from country to country every few years the kind of life you want? Working on the ground with an international development project may sound exciting, but life can be very difficult in the areas where you may be asked to serve (my friend Beth who worked in southern Sudan comes to mind– her daily life was incredibly challenging). Is this how you want to spend your days? Sherry and I brought this up not to suggest this shouldn’t be how you want to spend your days, but rather that it’s important to consider these issues.

Do I need a Master’s degree in these fields?

We’ve fielded this question many times and, at the moment, seem to be answering it in the same ways each time. Sherry always encourages those in the IR fields to get as much education as they can as early as they can. “It’s always harder to go back the older you get,” she advises. I mentioned, as I have before, that it realistically seems more and more necessary to have a Master’s in the fields, given the huge increase of those applying to and entering MA programs in IR. As more of your competition for jobs gets higher degrees, it becomes increasingly necessary, I think, that you have one as well.

But I also think that, at an early point in your career, several years of experience is just as valuable, if not more valuable, than a Master’s degree. I mentioned the shock I had when I came out of my Master’s degree program with 1-2 years experience and had tons of trouble trying to find anything but an entry level or nearly entry level job. I figured that my MA made me ready for a higher position: program associate, program officer, etc. But it turns out that while my Master’s made me attractive as a candidate for sure, it did not replace the fact that I didn’t have several years of experience working in international education or exchange. (I’ve talked with many young people, both at the NCIV session yesterday and at other sessions, who had similar experiences, thinking their MAs would take them a lot further right away than they actually did).

However, I’ve also come to see that as I’ve progressed in my career, my MA has come to mean more and more. I truly believe I wouldn’t have landed either my last job or my current one without a Master’s. This seems to show me that having that Master’s and coupling it with the experience I am constantly gaining will be a very beneficial thing for my career down the line. So while a Master’s might not be absolutely essential at first for a young professional (experience can be just as important), it seems that adding an MA to your resume eventually is a wise thing to do.

Is getting a Master’s at an international university a good idea?

Sherry and I deferred to those in the room who had done their graduate degrees abroad to answer this question. One participant who did a Master’s in IR in Ireland mentioned that doing graduate school abroad was a fantastic opportunity for her, and she had many experiences she wouldn’t have had if she’d studied in the U.S. She did say, however, that it was particularly difficult to get engaged with her U.S. netowrk upon graduation, simply because cultivation of that network had been difficult from abroad.  And while she did cultivate a network in Ireland, getting a job there had its own complications based on her status as a foreigner. So her conclusion was that there are many pluses to doing a Master’s abroad, as while as minuses, and in the end it’s up to the individual and what he or she wants.

What kinds of skills should I be looking to learn for positions in international affairs? What if I have broad interests? Can I pursue those or should I be looking for narrowly-tailored positions that will teach me very specific skills?

I think everyone in the room agreed that it’s both important to do what you like to do (that is, have your daily work be tasks that you enjoy and that utilize skills you are good at) and to always be trying to gain new skills, to be looking for growth opportunities within your job and when you decide it’s time for a new job. Certainly there are skills that are extremely beneficial and often necessary in international affairs jobs–whether those be intercultural competency, language skills, writing, proposal construction, budgeting, project management, etc.–but there is no reason not to pursue something that you enjoy simply because it doesn’t seem to “fit” into some kind of an international rubric. One participant summed this idea up quite nicely when she mentioned that she has a degree in chemical engineering but now works in international education. A perfect example that you should follow your interests and your passions and not try too hard to plan it all out, because it’ll never go according to that plan anyway.

Just when you master the geometry of one world, it slips away, and suddenly again, you’re swarmed by strange shapes and impossible angles.

That all said, my first day at the Alliance for International Educational and Cultural Exchange was a pretty successful one, I think, and I’m very gratified to be there. Among a few other places, my first eight hours on the job took me to the Foreign Press Center on 14th Street for a press conference announcing the introduction of the new Work, English Study and Travel (WEST) Program, a partnership between the U.S. and Korean governments that will allow “qualifying [Korean] university students and recent university graduates to enter the United States for a period of up to 18 months on J-1 exchange visitor visas that will allow them to study English, participate in professional-level internships, and travel independently.”

The three sponsoring organizations of the WEST Program are international nonprofits certainly worth checking out for those interested in the fields of international education and exchange:

The Association for International Practical Training (AIPT) (based in Bethesda, MD): provides educational and professional exchange experiences that enhance cultural awareness, develop global competencies, mutual understanding, and international cooperation.

The Council on International Educational Exchange (CIEE) (based in Portland, ME): helps people gain understanding, acquire knowledge, and develop skills for living in a globally interdependent and culturally diverse world.

The Intrax Cultural Exchange (based in San Francisco, CA): provides both international students and U.S. host families with a unique and personal exchange opportunity that increases cultural understanding, and inspires mutual respect and personal growth.

I’m also going to take a second to commiserate with the Cheeto-eating lady’s scorn of those who haughtily use the term “Mandarin” to refer to the Chinese language (this has been a little pet peeve of mine for awhile). My venting after the break.

I hate—I mean, hate—when people smugly use “Mandarin” to refer to the Chinese language. True, saying “Mandarin Chinese” is the commonly accepted way to distinguish that dialect of Chinese from others, like Cantonese or Shanghainese. But it seems to me that most people who use “Mandarin” have no idea what they’re actually saying and only use the term (rather than “Chinese”) because they think it makes them sound smart. Like the girl who once admonished me, when I said I speak Chinese, that “Chinese is not a language. It’s Mandarin.” Seriously?

Chinese is very much a language, one that happens to have a large number of dialects. And unlike dialects in many other languages, Chinese dialects are typically so different from one another that the speaker of a dialect from one region is unable to understand the dialect of another region. In fact, a debate rages as to whether the dialects of Chinese are actually dialects at all, or rather completely different languages.

And this is where the term “Mandarin” comes in. A “mandarin,” as many people know, refers to the nobles and magistrates in the Chinese Imperial Court. Thus, as Wikipedia tells us:

The English term “mandarin” comes from the Portuguese mandarim or Dutch mandarijn, from Indonesian/Malay məntəri, from Hindi mantri, from Sanskrit mantrin (meaning councilor or minister^[1]); it is a translation of the Chinese term Guānhuà (simplified Chinese: 官话; traditional Chinese: 官話), which literally means the language of the mandarins (imperial magistrates). The term Guānhuà is often considered archaic by Chinese speakers of today.

The English term “Mandarin Chinese” actually refers to what Chinese people today refer to not as guanhua but as putonghua, literally translated as “common speech.” Putonghua is the modern, standard Chinese language taught in schools and commonly used in business and day-to-day life (and is different than both classical Chinese and regional dialects). So while most Chinese can speak a dialect from the region in which they grew up, they all learn, speak, and employ “Mandarin Chinese” as a matter of course.

Now the reason I go into this detail, other than that I think it’s interesting in its own right, is to point out that people who derisively suggest you are wrong for saying you “speak Chinese” or “study Chinese” (”It’s Mandarin“) probably don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. Anyone who is familiar with the Chinese language knows that a foreigner studying the language is of course studying Mandarin, or putonghua. Learning a regional dialect first (with the possible exception of Cantonese) would be silly and impractical, like setting out to learn French only to study Creole instead. Once you’ve learned the standard Chinese language, you might later pick up a regional dialect, or at least a few words in that dialect (and usually then by virtue of living in that region). But in no instance have I ever heard of a non-Chinese studying anything but standard Chinese, or Mandarin.

What probably peeves me the most within this pet peeve is smug and haughty (and incorrect) uses of “Mandarin” in the media. I recently read an article in which the author admitted he couldn’t “read signs in Mandarin” while in China. Undoubtedly so, because while Chinese dialects are different in spoken form, all written Chinese is uniform. Hanzi, or Chinese characters, do not change from dialect to dialect. Thus, if you fly from Beijing to Hong Kong, you’ll probably notice that most people are no longer speaking putonghua, but rather guangdonghua, or Cantonese. But you’ll also hopefully notice that the Chinese characters all around you are the same as they were in Beijing (with the exception that Hong Kong still employs some traditional rather than simplified hanzi). So if two speakers of different regional dialects, both of whom can’t speak standard Chinese, meet, they might not be able to communicate verbally, but they would be able to communicate via the written language.

Of course I learned all of these distinctions by living in China, a wonderful privilege indeed. So I certainly don’t expect those who haven’t lived or traveled in the country to necessarily know this (I had no idea before I went there and still don’t understand most of the intricacies). But I do expect all of us not to pretend like we know something when we don’t. I’ve never traveled in Afghanistan or Iran and I don’t have the slightest clue whether I should be saying “Persian” or “Farsi” or who knows what when I refer to the language spoken there (maybe I should learn). But I do know I’m not going to pretend that I understand the difference just to sound worldly and smart, and I sure as hell hope that if I write a journalistic piece employing either of the terms, that I’ve done my homework and am doing everything in my power to get my usage correct

(Whew. That was definitely more than a second, but I feel better now. Rant complete. If anyone reads this and knows more about the Chinese language than me, which is probably a lot of you, you are obliged to point out all of my errors.)

We’ll see what it’s like in Beijing, where I’m headed tomorrow.

A brief word on what the heck I’m doing in China anyway. On a macro level, I’m here traveling with the Dean of Georgetown College (Georgetown University’s undergraduate arts and sciences school), expanding our linkages and partnerships with various Chinese universities, including Fudan University here in Shanghai, and Renmin and Beijing Universities and the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing. On a more specific level, we’re using our expertise at Georgetown as a practitioner of the liberal arts to help Chinese universities establish and grow their own liberal arts programs. Chinese universities have a tradition of pre-professional education, but not of general education in the liberal arts tradition. There is a new interest at top universities, however, in developing this liberal arts tradition. We, as representatives of Georgetown College, are here to act in something of an advisory role.

Yang Xinyu, Secretary General of the China Scholarship Council, said it well when discussing (in this IIE publication) U.S.-China exchange in higher education:

China’s development has unique characteristics, and it can be difficult to adapt the experiences of others to this context. By opening their doors to the outside world, Chinese higher education institutions could discuss these problems with partners from other countries, see their own problems from a broader standpoint, and make changes based on what they have learned through this exchange.

I think this gets to the core of what Georgetown College is trying to do with its Chinese partners in their development of liberal arts programs within their universities: present our model of the liberal arts not as the solution, but rather as just one model, as well as a gateway to dialogue about the “Chinese model” in the hopes of making progress based on what is learned through the exchange.

So, now that the question of what I’m doing in China has been answered, the next question could reasonably be: why am I, as a communication director at Georgetown, involved in this China work? The answer after the jump.

My position description doesn’t contain any mention of China or international programs or international travel. Instead it does contain many mentions of, as you might expect, communication-related responsibilities: websites, publications, writing, branding, etc. So why is my boss bringing me to China?

Because, quite frankly, I have experience and interest in the country. When I was interviewing for my job nearly two years ago, the Dean was particularly interested in my experience living in China for a year. I hadn’t expected this. If there was one major hesitation I had about the position, it was that it didn’t seem to have an international focus or component. It certainly had the communications component I was looking for, but it seemed to be lacking that international part—which was more than a small problem for me. I knew going into the interviews that this could be a deal breaker for me. I needed the internationalness.

So you can imagine my satisfaction when China became a main topic in my interviews. Georgetown was (and still is) making a huge push into China, signing strategic agreements, setting up strategic partnerships, encouraging more students to study there and more faculty to do research there. We’re doing lots of outreach into China from our office, the Dean said during our interview, and your experience would seem to make you ideally suited to be involved in that. So would my position take on a China component? I asked. I can’t promise that, she responded. But I will tell you that I make sure to utilize the skills and engage the interests of my employees, she followed up.

And she kept true to her word. She immediately engaged me in the College’s China activities, a year of work which culminated in a trip to Shanghai and Beijing last June, as well as this second one I’m on right now. It has been very satisfying for me not only to be professionally engaged with China, but also to discover that internationalness could be found in a job that wasn’t seemingly international. It was gratifying to see that simply by making my interests known and illustrating that my skill set and experience could make an impact in that area, I was given responsibility that fell outside the range of my job description.

I guess the takeaway from this long post is that jobs with international flavor and international travel are not always confined to multinational corporations, international NGOs, and the Foreign Service. Internationalness can be found elsewhere, in jobs that you might not think have it—sometimes all you have to is look, or even ask.

In other news regarding Notre Dame, I am actually on campus in South Bend, Indiana right now to participate in a series of international career events with students and faculty and will be delivering the keynote address (that’s right, keynote) at an event tonight called “International Impact”: Contributions of Arts and Letters Majors to Society, Business, and Global Relations,  Pretty fancy, I know.  More on the outcomes of this event and these meetings at Notre Dame later.