How to become an expat?

The first question that anybody ever asks me is, "How do I join the glamorous expat lifestyle?" Because there is nothing more exciting than waiting in line at the foreigners' office for an Aufenthalts- genehmigungverlängerungmitgesprächstermin or going to the bakery and getting funny looks when you ask how whole the grains in the Vollkornmischbrötchen are (answer: very). Or getting together with other expats trying to string together the longest compound word which could be said in one breath (a former colleague came up with the one which I used here).

It takes hard work really. The way it works in economics is that you go on the job market once you have one and a half finished papers from your PhD dissertation. My dissertation topic on the effect of labor's bargaining power on vacancy creation during the Great Depression has been charitably referred to as "out of the box" by a certain professor who's usually right about everything. But it seemed like a hot topic at the time. Around September or so you meet with your adviser who gives the green light or red light for the upcoming job market endeavor.

Upon receiving the green light, you assemble a packet which consists of the finished paper, a cover letter, a CV, a research statement, and possibly a teaching statement. And then you send out this packet to any remotely possible place who advertises on the American Economic Association's (AEA's) website. At around the end of the November, interview invitations start coming in.

The interviews happen at the AEA meeting right after New Year's. It was in New Orleans my time around. It's like speed dating for economists. The interviews happen for 30 minutes to an hour in hotel rooms scattered around the city. The interviewers ask about past, present and future research, teaching, and the like, and the interviewees get to ask about the departments in turn. These interviews vary greatly; my most successful one was the one that I thought went the worst at the time. In another interview, the interviewer took a time-out to run to the bathroom to throw up. There is a lot of variation in how these things go.

From January to the beginning of March is flyout season, when the places fly out their short-listed candidates to give a seminar talk and to interview with individual people. Then places make their decisions and most people end up with jobs.

That did not work out for me. It was March 2008 and my ideas about the Great Depression did not catch on. Spring and the Great Recession were in the air. Looking back, I probably wasn't ready to go onto the market, and I should have gone with a different research topic.

There is a second round called the "scramble" which kicks off at the end of March or in early April--about now actually. I sent out a few more packets during the scramble, including a packet sent on a whim to the institute in Kiel. A couple of friends of mine had gone to Kiel to study German and they raved about the place (my theory is that they were drunk all of the time). Also, the institute is known abroad for its summer schools in economics. I figured that it wouldn't hurt to apply. I got an email from the institute asking to set up a conference call. They mixed up the time difference because of daylight savings time so I got woken up early by the call in California. Nonetheless, they seemed to like me; they flew me out here; and I got the job.

Beautiful downtown Kiel

I moved from San Diego to Germany, turned 30, and watched the U.S. banking sector completely collapse during the same week in mid-September 2008. It was never my dream in life to live in a country where I don't really speak the language, but I figured that it would be an interesting adventure. So that's how I ended up here.

Some parts of expat life are easy to get used to.

Of the other expats I know, some are here for work; one is here with his long-term boyfriend; some come here for the military; and some come here as students. These reasons are sometimes combined. I can count the number of Americans that I know in Kiel on one hand. Most expats go to Munich or Berlin, which let's face it, are more interesting places. This is the story of an idiosyncratic expat economist whose life has taken him on a journey to a place that he had never imagined.