Expatriate.

Okay, it's the second time I've lived abroad. I was thinking It's be easier this time around, (no suit and tag, no geeky hair parted on the side, no spine-tingling constant fear of having to talk to people, no foreign language.) Instead, it's a lot harder. Maybe it's because it was so much simpler the first time. I knew my place in life, and even though I hated talking to perfect strangers all the time, I knew my role. There's a certain simplicity to that.

This time I'm older. It's like Ryan posted, we're all getting older. For me, the pressure's on to actually manage to develop some marketable analytical skills. I was invited to eat at the home of one of the church member's out here several weeks ago. It was partially a whole family affair because the husband's mother was there. We made small talked and I schmoozed with expert skill. All in all it was fairly pleasent. But the granny mentioned something that stuck with me. We were discussing my previous studies and my mission and everything and she commented that I was 25 and I'd never had a real job. "Ugh, she's right." Furthermore, I'm 25 and I work illegally as a busboy at a chinese restaurant.

In some ways, I feel too young, not too old. And the wierd thing is that I'm approaching the apex of my field. One of my professors (a guy who honestly looks like he might be six years older than I) said that he enjoyed his Master's year the most because you achieved the highest level for the first time in the field and everyone took it a little more seriously. At this level, in the field of international relations (and I suppose any field in politics or social sciences) one begins to realize that easy answers are, at best illusions and at worst platitudes, and holding any position at all is a tenuous exercise. How could President Bush order troops to war, to die, based on assumptons? Of course I recognize the fallacy of his judgement and I condemn it, but studying this topic has brought me to the point where I can see the potential costs of inaction, the arithmatic that may have gone into the decision. I suppose I can see the benifits of being "the decider."

At any rate, I've strayed. (I still hate the guy, don't worry.) What I'm really asking is when will I feel confident enough in what I know to act decisively? I write papers that examine the pros and cons of various cources of action and in academe, I'm allowed to remain aloof from certitude because it has no real world application. I applied for a job as an analyst at the CIA last week. There my analysis, my papers could have real world outcomes. Am I ready for that?

I feel old. And sick and tired of life-on-a-shoestring as a student. But I feel way too young to be "an expert in the field of terrorism." So I grew a beard.