How to become a working girl in Milano

In the previous posts I have described some aspects of my moving to Milano: the paperwork to get a permesso di soggiorno, the (for me relatively few) hours of waiting in line, Italian corruption, the advantages of being a teacher of English and of course our gorgeous new casa. This means I have almost finished telling about my experiences in Italy up to now except for my job hunt. So, if you're interested in a short lesson 'how to become a working girl in Milano', read on!

I started sending out CV's in May, when I was still living in Holland. As writing and constructing a CV truly is a science worthy of its own university professor and I didn't know shit about it back then, I obviously did not receive any response to those. This depressed me a lot, because I had hoped to have a job before I took the big step and was sort of counting on that. However, after some experiences in the CV writing process and the making of the necessary changes, I emailed my first CV's worthy of an answer in late July and early August. However, as the complete city of Milano shuts down for the summer during August, I still did not get any replies. This made my stay in Milano quite the holiday for the first few weeks. Olaf and I hadn't seen each other for five of six weeks, so we were really happy about having the possibility to spend a lot of time together. I went to several hotels to ask for a job and sent out some more CV's, but obviously this wasn't a full-time job. This meant I read a lot, got a tan, visited all the sights and cuddled a lot with Olaf. We also went to Rome for a few days, which was as great as it sounds and made me - being a classical scholar - feel like heaven for a short time (for pictures, see Olaf's weblog).

A few days before we were leaving for Holland for my graduation ceremony and goodbye party I had my first interview for a job teaching English. I was very nervous, miscalculated the distance I had to go, had to run the last hundreds of meters and consequently arrived as wet as our kitchen after I've done the dishes. Fortunately, the man conducting the interview wasn't Italian but British, which meant appearances were not as important as they could have been. On the whole, it went quite well and he was very positive and said he would call me in September. I didn't really believe that I would get the job and it wasn't the greatest job imaginable, but it did make me see a light at the end of the tunnel (as I had been pretty much convinced nobody was going to hire me because of my lack of experience) and motivated me to continue my search.

We were in Holland for a week at the end of August and had a great time. We visited loads of friends and family, drank far too much and had some great parties - among which of course my graduation and goodbye party, which rocked!!! All of you who were there, thank you so much for being there, it was great! I may not have had the time to talk to every single one of you as long as I wanted, but it certainly was great seeing you all. During this week I received one phone call and two emails from Milano inviting me for job interviews - all for jobs teaching English - with three different companies. When it was time to return to Milano, Olaf and my father drove Olaf's father's van to bring all our stuff and I flew back. Afterwards, we spent a great weekend getting all our shit - and boy, we've got a lot of things - in order and celebrating our first visitor (my father). Thanks again, Theo, for all your help, we really couldn't have done it without you!! I was really happy and proud to be able to show my father my new city and we had a lot of fun, great meals, lovely wines and beers and some good talks.

My father left early on Monday morning and then it was immediately time for me to get to work, as I had two job interviews that day. These interviews were at two different schools: The English Academy and Corporate English. Incredibly but true, both schools hired me and I started teaching trial lessons for The English Academy the next day. On Wednesday I had my third interview, at CTL (Cinque Terre Lingue), and I was hired again. I now found myself in the fortunately relaxing position of having too many jobs and being able to choose which schools I wanted to work for. I made my choice based partly on a gut feeling and partly on my previous experiences. The English Academy was a very good and respected school and paid very well, but they were quite formal and believed in a kind of full-immersion approach for new teachers. I didn't get any training or feedback, but they just put me in front of a class and said 'teach, become confident and learn from your own mistakes'. On the other hand, my job interviews with Corporate English and CTL were not only successful but also fun. I just felt at home with both of them and so I decided to quit working for The English Academy. The company I had my first interview with in August also called me recently, so in the end I was actually hired by four schools. And I hadn't actually made that much of an effort!!!

Since then, I have attended teacher training sessions, have observed lessons and have been brushing up on my knowledge of English grammar. Two weeks ago, I started teaching my first lessons at Corporate English and next week I will teach my first lessons for CTL. I don't have that many hours of teaching a week yet, but I'm hoping this will increase next month. I suppose it's a good thing to start off slowly, but I'm going crazy because I haven't been very productive for almost three months now. This is starting to get on my nerves and I'm ready for one of more new projects (I really hate doing nothing, boredom is the greatest evil in this world). I still have to learn a lot about teaching, but I think it is going quite well. And what better way to learn than to actually do it, eh?

Working is also a very good way of meeting new people. Not the students of course, I need to keep my relationship with them professional, but I'm talking about my colleagues. I met a very cool, nice and certifiably crazy woman from South Africa (just the way I like my friends) called Belinda, who is just starting with Corporate English just like me. We hit it off quite well when we had teacher training together. Everybody at Corporate English is really cool, by the way. Yesterday evening I went to my first (bi-)monthly teacher meeting. The schools organizes these evenings to exchange information and stimulate the contact between the school and the teachers and between the individual teachers. After this we went out for a pizza and some drinks, completely paid for by the school. Afterwards we went dancing and it ended up becoming a great but late night filled with music, cocktails, beers, drunk people, live music, playing rugby with women instead of rugby balls and many, many laughs. Consequently, I'm quite happy with my job situation. I'd just like to have some more work to do. But all in good time...

Ciao, Fedor