U.S. 20-somethings make overseas English instruction a professional trend

By Andrew Garberson

Your generation's members separated their resume from the stack with a broad list of extracurricular activities.

The following generation of employment-seekers reinvented the term “monotonous” in an act the business world cleverly called an internship. The semester abroad standard was born when students, and the employers they hoped to impress, realized that a summer of menial tasks at a randomly selected white collar service firm hardly created a well-rounded applicant.

Today, a resume appears incomplete without “Master's” written somewhere above “Bachelor's,” which is becoming increasingly difficult to achieve without several years of data entry and an entry-level salary. A year of international English instruction satisfies MBA application requirements and, for some, the wish to continue procrastination habits learned as an undergraduate.

Language institutions around the world are desperately interviewing anyone with a college degree and an appropriately colored passport. This opportunity celebrates the characteristics that seem to plague Generation Y - a discontented direction and something-for-nothing mentality.

As a member of that “what about me?” group, I found personal comfort and a temporarily satisfying answer to questions related to my future in a gap year constructed upon a one-way ticket and a reference book on English grammar. I romanticized cliché imagery of leaving the nest and the idea of not only becoming an individual, but an interesting one. I was to gain incalculable wisdom and lose dependency, with the obvious exception of that claimed on my tax returns, which kept me insured.

Truly determined to distance myself from the field of applicants, I decided to consummate my degree in international business in the world's most thrilling economy and home to the language of the future. A forgettable city of 7 million in southern China, one of the most influential trade regions in the world, seemed the perfect place to further my education of global commerce. I was to teach oral and business English to university students 14 hours per week and spend the remaining time as a cultural sponge.

China's developing status attracted a wide array of intriguing business professionals, whose presence enlightened my travels. The caliber of people I met confirmed my suspicion about the next generation of business leaders. The peers I had admired in business school who had secured internships at a “big four” accounting firm or scored highly on the GMAT were quickly becoming big fish in a small Midwestern pond. I was no longer competing against my classmates or Ivy League diplomas.

My resume was beside that of a European passport holder I met in Thailand who was raised in a bilingual household, had a BBA from NYU and a master's from Beijing University. He had lived on three continents and fluently spoke four languages, including English and Chinese. He, and thousands of similarly impressive candidates, had raised the bar to previously unimaginable heights.

The lesson I stumbled upon during my time abroad was that the environment I learned about in business school and in various internships has changed at an alarming rate. What began an illusory escape from a dreaded daily commute in business casual became an exciting perspective of the international mechanism that reignited my competitive American spirit.

Teaching assignments are an underappreciated method of transportation for international involvement and a vehicle that will likely dissipate as developing continues and English levels around the world improve.

My resume gained only five lines of experience last year that all fail to include buzz words applicable to my desired career. But if your human resources representatives ask me in an interview about my ability to process information, communicate effectively, or work in a diverse setting, they had better clear their schedules.

Andrew Garberson of Cedar Rapids is a graduate of the Tippie College of Business at the University of Iowa. He is launching a business in endurance sports consultancy in Cedar Rapids and also is an English tutor.