Looking for work in Rome turned out to be like a lot of my first experiences in the city: embarrassing, culturally confusing and all about language. The fact that I\u2019m a native English speaker is what got me every single English teaching job I had in Rome. In fact not one school asked to see my English teacher certification. Not. One. The fact that I didn\u2019t speak Italian and had just moved to Rome with almost no money, no job and no visa posed an obvious challenge. Despite having spent a semester trying to study on my own while finishing university and a summer practicing with Rosetta Stone software before my move, I could only really say \u201cCiao\u201d with great confidence. After that I got a bit muddled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I started calling schools that I found through the Pagine Gialle online, the Italian yellow pages. I started with my strongest phrase: \u201cCiao!\u201d and quickly devolved from there. \u201cYes, hi\u2026umm parli Inglese? English?\u201d Eventually some English speaker would be found and I\u2019d tell them I was looking for a job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I went for interviews at many schools. I had no smart phone so even getting to these schools involved figuring everything out on my computer in advance, writing down bus times and locations and drawing maps to help me since I didn\u2019t have a printer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some schools said they\u2019d only hire me if I had a work visa which is the old chicken and egg problem since you need the job to get the visa but you need the visa to get the job but you\u2026 oh whatever, let\u2019s go for coffee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I never did get a visa through any of the schools I worked for. I heard a combination of: \u201cNo we won\u2019t help with that\u201d or \u201cYes, maybe later on down the road\u201d and I was naive enough to think they meant it. I met a couple people who got visas through their schools. Just a couple and often they\u2019d had teaching experience before moving to Italy and had set up the job and visa in advance (basically, responsible people). One girl I\u2019d met who got her visa after moving to Rome had spent over a year proving to her school that she was worth it. Worth the hassle, the money, the risk. If you are one of these people, tell me what you did! I\u2019m always curious to hear about miracles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Why don\u2019t English language schools want to help with your visa? Because it\u2019s expensive for them and for you and you have to go back to the US to get it. Not just to the US, you have to go to the consulate where you have residency, which in my case was in San Francisco, 10,000 kilometers and about a thousand bucks away, which I quite simply didn\u2019t have. Schools want you to start work immediately and they know that you\u2019re probably not going to stay in Italy long enough to get a visa anyway. That and they definitely don\u2019t want to pay you a high enough salary to even qualify you to ask for the visa. Plus there\u2019s the taxes on that \u2013 no way. Oh and plus the consulate will probably say no anyway. If you\u2019ve just got your TESOL or TEFL, how can you prove you\u2019re the only person that can take the job of explaining what a pronoun is to an Italian child?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ll never forget the interview where I met the infamous Daniela, director of an English school that operated across Rome. She was a small woman who is the closest human equivalent to beef jerky I\u2019ve ever seen. She was all sinew. The definition of tough. She was minuscule and in constant motion like a shark or a mosquito and I have no doubt in a boxing ring she could have taken down Muhammad Ali. She fixed you with an unblinking stare while she talked. \u201cCiao?\u201d I tried.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our first interview went well (\u201cCiao! You are from the US? Ok, perfect.\u201d) and we scheduled a second in which I\u2019d do a mock lesson on house vocabulary. She made it sound like just a formality so when I stood in front of the board and she pretended to be a student asking me questions in a fake bad accent (\u201cWhat is mean: bedroom?\u201d) I was a little thrown off. After five minutes of using my best Byron techniques (show pictures, elicit vocabulary, write on board, make sentences) she stopped me with a look of horror on her face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat,\u201d she said, \u201care you doing?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Silence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI don\u2019t understand the question.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat do you think you are doing?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I stood, frozen in the eyesight of the angry little bull like Bambi, clutching my pictures of sofas and bathrooms. \u201cI\u2019m \u2026 teaching?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNo. No, no, no, no. I\u2019m sorry Lauren, this is just not how we do things here.\u201d Her tone was the equivalent of if I\u2019d been showing porn to children. Disappointed. Horrified. Shocked. Disturbed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHow would you do it?\u201d I asked. I hadn\u2019t even gotten to the vocab reenforcement game I\u2019d come up with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She stood up. \u201cLet me be the teacher,\u201d she said, taking the dry erase marker out of my hand. She wrote the word \u201cDoor\u201d on the board.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cRepeat after me! Door!\u201d Her eyes bored into mine. Oh, I was supposed to play along.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDoor?\u201d I said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDoor!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYes, Door.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAgain! Door!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDoor!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAgain, Door!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dear God, will this end?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cRepetition is essential,\u201d she said. \u201cMeaning can come later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that in a nutshell is exactly what I was trying to escape what I saw my life being in the US if I followed expectations. The office. The 9 to 5. The five day work week. The routine. The repetition. A performance of order and decorum that I feared would suffocate me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In third grade at the age of 8 I felt depressed about going to school, not because of the school work itself or my teachers or other students (except you, Eric, man you were annoying) but because of the routine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rob Bell said: \u201cDespair is the belief that tomorrow will be just like today.\u201d Context was different (he was a former pastor being interviewed by Oprah) but when I heard that quote I remembered my 3rd grade self having a tantrum on a Sunday night, telling my mom, \u201cIt\u2019s just THE SAME every day and then the next day, it\u2019s THE SAME and then the next week it\u2019s THE SAME and even next month: THE SAME. And then there\u2019s summer break but after that\u2026 it\u2019s THE SAME.\u201d I\u2019m sure she thought: Welcome to life, kid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I felt equally depressed by my prospects after college. I couldn\u2019t bear the idea of the internship before the job before the promotion before the savings before the loan payments before (finally!) life could be lived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wanted to say, \u201cNo Daniela, meaning has to come first.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I also wanted to say, \u201cI can repeat whatever the hell you want because I\u2019ve been to a ton of schools and if I don\u2019t get a job soon I\u2019m going to be screwed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I didn\u2019t have time to say either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d she said. \u201cWe can\u2019t hire you if you teach like this.\u201d I think she saw the look of desperation and frustration as unbidden tears welled in my eyes because she did something I hadn\u2019t expected from the tiny, charging bull.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She grabbed my shoulders and looked me straight in the eye. She was close. I was scared. \u201cCome on,\u201d she said. \u201cWe are women. We are strong! You can do it!\u201d Then, dropping her arms and turning to leave the room,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNow I have to go. Ciao ciao!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Later that week I got a job. I could do this. Now, I\u2019d just have to figure out \u2026 how, exactly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Looking for work in Rome turned out to be like a lot of my first experiences in the city: embarrassing, culturally confusing and all about language. The fact that I\u2019m a native English speaker is what got me every single English teaching job I had in Rome. In fact not one school asked to see […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenmouat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenmouat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenmouat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenmouat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenmouat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=68"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenmouat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenmouat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions\/69"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenmouat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=68"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenmouat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=68"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenmouat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=68"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}