One thing that fascinates me is that I am getting confused about how old I am. The last time I pulled up roots and moved abroad, I was 22. Now I'm 56. At my old job at South Eugene High School, most people my age were talking about retirement, and three of my department colleagues did in fact retire while I was there. But I am as far from retirement as, well, as when I was 22. And in terms of where I live, this is a student apartment -- a roomy one, but one where cardboard boxes serve as coffee tables and where there are no rugs, wall adornments or laundry hamper.
At work here, I'm the one that needs orientation. I'm constantly asking questions. Examples: What are the "opening ceremonies" for the academic year (Avaajaiset)? Speeches and later mölkky. What is mölkky? A game like bowling played with chunks of wood. Where do I get file folders? We don't use those. Etc. etc. etc. I'm not old and wise like a professor in the US. I'm a naive fledgling who needs lots of help figuring things out.
On the other hand, my age does give me some advantages. I'm not very worried about impressing people. Today I had lunch with two professors from my school -- and here, professors are FULL professors, and not everyone becomes one. I didn't feel nervous and giggly. I simply ate my lunch, asked questions when I wanted to, conversed and laughed. But perhaps it isn't fair to compare this to the way I acted as an assistant professor in the US. There, your first seven (or eight or nine) years are spent trying to impress everyone so you'll get tenure, and it often doesn't matter what you've done -- they want you out. Here, they have assured me several times that they are SO happy I am here, and I suspect they are worried that I will move on to an institution closer to the heart of Europe.
Another advantage is my confidence level. Yes, I know how to do research. Yes, I know how to write. Yes, I know I will be published. I may not have an earth-shaking theory to present, but I can do solid and interesting research and work well to meet deadlines. And even with the Finnish language, I'm beginning to worry less about saying obscenities without meaning to because I have failed to attend to the rules of vowel harmony; I have more faith that I will make myself understood. Today I even dared to conduct my entire identity card business at the police station in Finnish and only needed to revert to English when I didn't understand one part of a sentence that seemed important (it had to do with leaving a 2-cm margin around my signature on the application).
But I feel young here. Probably somewhere around 35-40. I rode my new bicycle (thank you Jim and Chris Pendergrass and the Vasa members who will be contributing to my bike fund!) to work and back today. I felt free and fun and youthful, zipping around doing my errands and learning how the unspoken rules of bike vs pedestrian traffic work here ("go with the flow"). And as I sit here in my student apartment feeling a few aches and pains and wondering what year this is, it occurs to me that age really has nothing to do with it. New beginnings can come at unexpected points in our lives. It just depends on whether we have the courage, interest or trust to embrace them. It's scary, but a quote I saw on a wall at South Eugene High School when I was in the throes of deciding whether to apply for this job or not kind of sums it up: "Jump and the net will appear".
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