while looking for an itinerary template this morning (i realized my own attempt is woefully inadequate), i came across this template. that there is a template for this on the microsoft website was a bit odd. that over 22,000 people had looked for it, found it suited their needs, then downloaded it also seemed somewhat strange. way to go gates.

here is an overview of some of my current job duties. not exactly as advertised, but amusing nonetheless.

• Schedule international flights
• Negotiate with hotels and apartment complexes for short-stay housing (tons o fun)
• Campus tour guide
• Driver (pick up, shuttle)
• Liaison for foreign professors, visitors
• Make introductions (to people I have never met nor know anything about)
• Direct the conversation when necessary (especially when local representative is hostile to foreign ideas)
• Create, schedule, execute itineraries with department heads, local corporate executives
• Take blame for being late, unprepared when trouble arises
• Participate in meetings well above my pay grade (program directors, department heads) and contribute in (vaguely) meaningful way
• Help visitors decompress after 5 hours of meetings (see campus tour guide, walking through campus)
• Help foreign students prepare US tax returns
• Seek internships for summer positions for foreign students (only later to learn that this is not allowed through scholarship program and a week of phone calls, emails and job searching could have been avoided if only I had been informed of this)
• “Cold call” potential partners for future partnerships (multicultural projects with our exchange students, internship possibilities, setting up meetings between foreign visitors and local executives and academics bigwigs who often have no idea why they should actually meet each other)
• Navigate US State Dept. website (a task in itself), e-mail questions that never get answered
• Co-author a journal article in field only tangentially related to my own
• Research for said journal article
• Read numerous journal papers in related fields to prepare for writing an article I would be thoroughly unprepared to write (although I enjoy reading, the 600-800 pages a week for my ma program is more than enough that I do not relish the idea of reading another 100 or so a week in a field that, actually, proposes to measure learning (quantitatively and qualitatively) in a way that I specifically decry in my own philosophy papers)
• Write a conference proposal for above journal article (10 days notice before deadline)
• Listen to streaming, vague, disconnected ideas about upper management’s goals for current programs and then create coherent questions other than, “so what do you want me to do?”
• Find new, inoffensive ways to ask: “what am I supposed to do with this information?” or “so, could you repeat that in the form of a task or coherent sentence through which I can plan a course of action?”
• Help exchange students write résumés
• Help exchange students write cover letters
• Help students get notarized copies of all their documents
• Coordinate Visa information for teachers visiting university in one month with US State Dept (zero fun, in case you had any doubts)
• Learn to accept “attitude” from public servants whom I will never meet and, justifiably so, have little patience with someone learning the process

Endure occasional mocking when one of the above is not executed in manner desired by upper management