The Crucial Decision That Helped Me Thrive in a Recession

Back in 1982, I had just returned to the US from a year-long study trip through Asia during my senior year in college. I’d had a fantastic experience in a dozen countries, I had some college loans to repay, and I was ready to go home and get a job.

The economy had other ideas for me.

This was during a terrible recession that made jobs scarce in Oregon, and despite applying for over 75 jobs, I was unable to find one. I was even doing those “information interviews” where you go in and just talk to someone in your field of interest, just to make contacts.

No luck.

It didn’t help that I lived in a town of 350 people and had to drive into Portland (35 minutes away) to submit applications or show up for interviews. Remember that this was pre-internet–I couldn’t search online. I had to drive into town (three miles away) to buy the newspaper each day to look at the “help wanted” ads! Plus, my father had just had open-heart surgery and I was supposed to stay at home and watch over him. Oh, and my high school friends were all married and had kids and wondered what the heck I was doing–going to college and traveling around the world hadn’t helped me get a job. They were all making more money than I was with nothing but a high school degree. And the amount I’d paid for college could have been a down payment for a house and still buy me a perfectly nice pick-up. Clearly, I’d screwed up.

Thankfully, I decided to expand my options. Even though I had JUST come back from a year abroad, and even though I had student loans to repay, I applied for a job teaching English in Japan.

It seemed like a long-shot. My parents were not happy. I questioned whether I was willing to commit to the two-year contract they required.

But I did it anyway. I got the job–and it completely changed my life. Bonus: I got paid way more than I would have had I been working at an entry-level job in Oregon.

What I gained from that teaching experience abroad was a tremendous sense of confidence in my ability to go somewhere completely foreign and figure out how to thrive. I was in a small town in a rural area up in the snow country, and was one of only half a dozen foreigners for hundreds of miles. (Pre-internet, pre-fax, pre-video.)

I ended up meeting the love of my life–a fellow English teacher who had grown up only ten miles from my Oregon town. We got married, had two kids there, and moved back to the US where we started an export company, two retail stores and a variety of other projects.

What we’d learned from being abroad is that we could do just about anything if we forged ahead and didn’t listen to the voices in our heads (and from others) suggesting we might fail.

Years later, when the Japanese economy tanked, my husband and I took advantage of it: we put the export company in a coma, sold a business, and took our four girls (ages 7, 8, 10, and 11) to India and Nepal for three months. That opened our eyes to new possibilities and planted the seed that led to our family’s move abroad in 2005.

I know how taking a job abroad during a slumped economy led to unimaginable opportunities for my family and me–and that’s one of the reasons I recommend it to twentysomethings who are having a hard time gaining traction in the US economy right now.

Sometimes, all it takes to thrive is opening up to a new set of options.

Tagged as: depression, economy, graduates, information interviews, Japan, jobs, recession, students, study abroad, teaching abroad, teaching English, teaching opportunities, work abroad