Surviving Fulbright

So it turns out this joy ride through Malaysia really won't last forever. Apparently my replacement has been already chosen, which means that I really won't be here next year and there's no way they can make me stay. Actually, my replacement is really my replacements. Someone important must have thought I was overworked, so there will be two ETAs at Imtiaz Kuala Berang twiddling their thumbs instead of one. I think they just realized the only person who could replace me would be two people, so I feel very confident in saying that they'll be at best, half the ETA that I was.

Dear New Malaysian ETAs,
Congratulations! You have been excepted to what everyone seems to think is a prestigious program. Your work is pretty much done. You effectively gotten yourself a free trip to Asia, staved off having to decide what to do with your life for the next year, and padded your resume and grad school application so it will now say "Fulbright Fellow" forever after.

Really, all you have to do is to not mess it up and get sent home. This is not as easy as you might think. The thing is, you'll probably want to be sent home. Like, a lot. Pretty much every ETA I know fantasizes about being sent home at some point. Everyone has different reasons for it of course. Some want to be sent home because their schools believe fish heads and constant criticism (the whip and the poisoned carrot) are the best way to milk their ETAs for all they're worth. Others dream about being sent home because a long plane ride with movies seems much more interesting than what they do most days.

But, New ETAs, (and this is the important part) we do not get sent home because then we would not have that padding on our resume, and all of our friends would laugh at us and say, "I knew [your name] would quit. They never deserved that prestigious award to pad their resume in the first place."

So we prevail. Most of us have 7 months in this country, a few decided to have 10. Who knows how long you'll be here for by the time the logistics are all hammered out. But rest assured, no matter how long it is, or how long it seems, it is still a finite amount of time. Moreover, assuming you're more than 10 months old, it's most likely an amount of time you've already lived through. You can definitely do this.

Here are my survival tips:
1. Care enough to do a good job, but not enough to get your heart broken when someone craps all over your good job. Think of your heart as your passport or wallet. If you leave it lying on the ground, something bad will happen to it. Keep it in a safe place until you feel comfortable taking it out and showing it around.

2. If you plan a lot, you will waste a lot of time. Classes get canceled, exams come up, things change and no one tells you anything. If you make a lot of intricate plans, something will happen to mess them up. The less attached you are to doing exactly what you want exactly when you want the easier this will all be. As my sister's boss used to tell her when a meeting got canceled, "I am giving you the gift of time." So when something happens, just take out your book and read for a bit. You'll probably never get this kind of freedom in your work life again.

3. Have a book with you. I should've mentioned that already. When you finish that book, get another one. In lieu of a book, keep a journal or an iPod with you. That way you have something you enjoy doing when you have down time so it feels like a treat rather than an inconvenience.

4. Your school will probably believe that "nothing is good enough," and interpret that one of two ways. For my school, if I did nothing that would be good enough for them. So I do a bit and have an insane amount of free time. For Sarah's school, nothing she does is good enough for them. She works enough to put three of me to shame and still gets no love for it. When you figure out how your school is try not to take it personally either way.

5. As the illustrious Ellie Cross's father says, "stay curious." Do what you can to stave off bitterness towards the differences you encounter and then do what you can to ride it out with grace. It's pretty easy to sound like a good person when you're comfortable. You get to find out if you can do it when you're sleep deprived, mocked, choking down fish crackers, ignored, put under a microscope, and isolated. You're finally going to have that life-changing experience you said you wanted when you wrote your personal statement for the Fulbright committee last September, so now you get to see what happens when you get what you wish for.

6. It helps to have an outlet. To avoid turning to the bitterness and frustration which is so easy when things go bad, I'd recommend finding a way you can exorcise your grievances so that you only have to deal with them once. By having this blog I can only really write about any problem once before it gets boring both to write and to read. Keep moving forward. Since I just taught my kids about constructive criticism (which doesn't really exist here) I try to practice that with Malaysia as a country. So when I'm annoyed I say out loud whatever it is that I'd like to change about the country. That way I feel like I'm being heard and I can let it go. Example:

"Hey Malaysia, when I get screwed by a taxi it makes me feel like I can't trust people here. Can I have some more honest taxi drivers?"
or
"Hey Malaysia, I understand schedules change a lot here, but if someone could tell me when that happens, it'd make me a lot happier."
or
"Hey Malaysia, can you have less bed bugs in the hotels I stay in? It'd really be great to sleep without having my blood sucked."

I say these as earnestly as possible, and try to supplement my communication with Malaysia with equally constructive feedback to people who have bodies and might be able to help me.

7. This list could go on for a good long time, but for now I would just add that you should be open to the idea that maybe this wasn't such a terrible idea after all. Even if you picked Malaysia because you thought you had a good chance of getting in and it was close to the countries you really wanted to visit, maybe you still knew what you were doing when you signed up for this (even if you had no idea what you were signing up for).

Next time, I'll give you lucky souls a few tips on how to do survive/thrive at my school. I'm about to do step 1: "Get something to eat," which will happen roughly five times a day. Luckily, sweating, speaking slowly in English, and saying "What's up?" all burn calories, so it'd be pretty hard for me to gain any real weight here.