So what happens when you join some organization that claims to be the monster.com of the world for students and recent graduates? Certainly not a job in Japan, the opportunity of a life time and the warmest welcome imaginable….right? I mean that doesn’t just happen. Something like that doesn’t exist. Or if it did more people would know about it. Wrong….really wrong…incredibly wrong. Let’s rewind. Let’s go to a warm summer afternoon in Sacramento in August.

     After a talk with a good family friend, Mrs. Woolgar I decided I wanted to join a little something called AIESEC. I was told it was organization she had been a member of and through it worked as an accountant in South Africa, where she met her future husband. After I returned from a voyage on Semester at Sea in 2008, Mrs. Woolgar was adamant in telling me how much I would enjoy AIESEC if I became a member. So soon after I heeded her advice and looked it up online. The website for the American division was interesting but not very detailed. It claimed it was a sort of Monster.com but international and for students and recent graduates. hmmmmm…..interesting I thought to myself. Alright well I’ll try to join it. It was supposedly a chapter based organization and I soon found out there was not a chapter at my school. But there was a way around. I could join through a new method they were experimenting with. I would be ‘adopted’ by another chapter and then I would do all the organization requirements via the magic of internet. A few weeks later I had completed the process of applying and vuala! (wrong spelling,  just sound it out). So I was now a phantom member of an organization that had the potential to land me a job abroad. Cool, I guess, but could it result in anything real? Honestly I didn’t know, but I thought there was potential and that made me excited.

      I start searching the AISEC data base for jobs. Wow, I thought to myself, there are alot. Hundreds, around the globe and extremely diverse. Everything from teaching to social work to IT to Business management. Alright I kind of dig this. So I sent out my feelers looking for potential internships. Then I started getting emails. AISEC chapters were sending me offers to apply to different jobs. Some were in Europe, some were in the MIddle East, many were in India and Asia. So I began applying to see what job if any I could land.

A few months later I got an email from a guy named Koichiro in Japan. He told me that he liked my resume and that I should apply for a a teaching job he was managing. Alright I thought, why not. I applied, and waited. Waited a few weeks and then I got an email. The school, in a place named Isesaki wanted to do a skype interview with me. So I prepared my pronunciation of Konichiwa and one afternoon in UCSD’s Geisel library in a private room I had my interview. It went ok, but I had been nervous. Did I look ok? Did I speak well? Was I dressed too formally? Did I seem like someone who could teach kids? Again I waited. I waited for a few weeks not really having any concept of what would happen. Then it came. An email from Koichiro explaining that I had gotten the job. 

    Fast forward a few months. I finally overcome the hurdles of obtaining a Japanese student internship visa. A difficult situation that almost stopped my entire internship from happening. Life works in mysterious ways and I am so happy that it worked out like it did. This is fantastic. I cannot wait for the adventures ahead. 

Thank you AIESEC Japan. Thank you parents. Thank you friends. You have all supported me and now here I am. I did it. Time to have a blast…….