Higher (Mis)Education Part I

About a year ago, I had to make an important choice: either I could choose to wait for Lars to come to the US or I could go to Germany, where he lived.  Whew! Let me tell you, I lost a lot of sleep trying to figure out which choice I wouldn't regret.  

 A place for contemplating life's decisions at the Florida Wildlife Refuge

I knew I wanted to spend my life with my partner, who is German. We wanted to keep it simple; we would live in the USA or in Germany, close to family if possible.   I mean, picking a place could have huge consequences, right?  What if we get stuck there long-term?   

So, where did I want to raise my children?  What do I want to do professionally? Where did Lars want to raise his children?  (It turns out that some guys don't think about the latter very much.)   These were pressing questions for me. 

I had a problem though: I wasn't sure whether Lars would come to the US if I waited for him.  Really!  He is a German lawyer, so finding a job in the US would not be so straight-forward.  Like many men, his job makes him feel valuable as a person, and I didn't want to take that away from him.  (I recently read an MSN.com article, which noted that unemployment is the most prevalent cause of clinical-depression among American men, compared to divorce among American women.)  In retrospect, I probably thought I could handle unemployment, but he couldn't.  Was I trying to be a martyr or was I just tired of the job I had in Orlando?

One thing was certain: both he and I would have to change professions in order to be successful in the other country.  There's only a teeny market for German lawyers in the US and never really was one for super-academic-never-applied linguists in Germany.

So, education or re-education, aka going back to school, became a really important topic in our conversation about choosing a place to live.  Ask yourself, would you rather go back to school in the US or in Germany?  

Ahh, if only I knew then what I know now.  

We decided that it would be easier for me to go back to school in Germany than it would be for Lars to do so in the US.  We decided this based on the following facts.  Tuition is comically inexpensive in Germany compared to the tuition at the out-of-state private university I last went to.  Also, a bachelors degree only takes three years in Germany instead of the four it takes in the US.  I scored very well on the TestDAF exam, which is the German-language test for foreigners to study in Germany (like TOEFL or TOEIC in English).

Also, going back to school should be easier for me, since I'm younger than Lars.  And, Lars already has a good job in Germany, so he could support me if I went to school.  I can't offer Lars the same sort of financial support in the US.  I certainly wouldn't be able to support him and pay his tuition while he went to school in the US. 

We decided that it would be wisest for us both if I moved to Germany and applied to university programs in Germany. Lars would relocate to the city where I would study.  He assured me that he could find a job pretty much anywhere in Germany.  Hand-shake.  Agreed!  Let's go.  

I put in my two weeks notice at my job in Orlando and we booked the tickets.

To be honest, I was sad, excited and relieved.  I was sad to leave my family, who mean almost everything to me.  My family is my home.  But, I was excited to go back to school because I'd always had positive experiences at the university in the US (I studied at Florida State University and the University of Pennsylvania, to put it in perspective. Both are wonderful universities!).  And most importantly, I was relieved to not have to live apart from my life-partner much longer.  

The Visa process took maybe five days in Germany, being married to a German and all.  I was welcomed with open arms.

TO BE CONTINUED PART II (Mis)Education