The first thing that comes to mind is journalism. If you want to live abroad, travel a lot, and have the intellectual challenge of assimilating into other cultures, then you could set your goal to become a special correspondent of a region for an international news broadcaster (such as CNN, BBC, Fox, or Al Jazeera) or publication (such as Time, Newsweek, or The Wall Street Journal).
Another thing is to apply for jobs in cable TV's such as Discovery Travel and Living. They have shows about travel and lifestyle in different parts of the world, and need someone intelligent who learns new things fast in order to host their shows. Must be fun loving and interactive too.
A less obvious job is to teach abroad in international schools. I live in Jakarta, Indonesia, and have friends from North America, Australia, India, and Europe working as expat teachers in international schools. They get to work in an English speaking environment, but at the same time, get to be in a foreign country, interacting with people from different nationalities, including locals. The pay is great, and so are the vacations, which you may choose to spend on travelling the country and then some. If you come to Indonesia, an idea to spend your vacation is to backpack to exciting places like Tana Toraja, Bali-Lombok, Bunaken Marine Park, the royal city of Yogyakarta, Raja Ampat Island resorts, Baliem Valley, and Lake Toba. Bali, in particular, offers a lot of culture tourism where you could even live in the villages and learn traditional skills like Balinese cooking, dance, shadow puppets, gamelan music, sculpting, painting, etc.
My dad works for a multinational mining company (American) and has colleagues from many countries, including the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, UK, Africa, and Chile. They mostly come from engineering, accounting, and management backgrounds.
My cousin works for a finance company. She is a New Zealand citizen who studied in Canada, and now splits between New York and London with the company she interned with in her final year of school. I have another cousin who is an Indonesian citizen; she studied and worked in California for a few years, but now is taking dance school in Singapore and working part time.
My fiance's dad used to work for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in our country. I don't know what he studied in college, and as far as I know he's just an administrative worker (clerk) with big dreams. But he managed to travel to and live in Switzerland (where he and his wife had my fiance), Sweden (where they had my fiance's brother), Italy, The Netherlands, and Belgium, where he was working for the embassy. He never really picked up English or any other languages, and his mindset remains the same as the village peasant with big dreams of the big city, but at least he managed to secure a really good education for all three of his children, and they are all embarking on successful careers now.
If you want to follow his footsteps but actually use your brains, then maybe you want to take a bachelor's degree in International Relations and work your way up to become your country's ambassador.
Answered By: Mizz G - 7/9/2010 |