Expat by chance

How random events led me from a small Wyoming town to a life in Canada

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Expat by chance

How random events led me from a small Wyoming town to a life in Canada

I wouldn’t be an American expat if my father hadn’t bought a Dodge more than 50 years ago.

At the time I was attending my small town’s only high school, where about 10% of graduates went to college. At the time I had a vague plan to go to the University of Wyoming to become a lawyer.  This plan changed because of a specific event:  my father bought a new car, a white Dodge. 

His purchase meant that we started receiving the Dodge News Magazine in the mail. I read it because I then read everything available.  For inexplicable reasons, the Dodge Magazine carried a series of articles called America’s Great Universities.  Each article featured a prominent university, and they all sounded like wonderful places.  I began to imagine going to a more distant university.

My high school had no detectable career counseling.  If it had, I probably would’ve been told that applying to those distant schools was a waste of time and money.  I had no idea about the long odds against my admission and brashly applied to two of the Dodge schools and the University of Wyoming.  Some months later a thin envelope arrived from Palo Alto, California.  Stanford accepted me!

The thought of actually living at a university in California was intoxicating: Hollywood, hippies, movie making, palm trees, pro sports teams….  It sounded much more exciting than life in a town with two stop lights.  To my surprise, my parents didn’t object, and some months later I was off to a life in a strange and distant land.

While getting acquainted with my new fellow students, I quickly concluded that the Stanford Admissions office made a mistake.  I was waaay out of my depth.  Some of my fellow students had famous parents.  One had won an Olympic bronze medal in swimming.  All seemed to be better prepared and to have much more ambitious life goals than I did.

A new classmate asked me, “Where’d you go to school?”.  I thought that was an odd question but answered with the name of my small town high school.  “Ooh,” came the damning reply.  Awkward pause.  “Where’d you go to school?” I asked.  “Choate.”  Seeing my blank response, he added, “Where John Kennedy went to prep school”.  “Oh” I replied weakly.

After many sleepless nights and much hard work, I slowly realized that I could compete.  For me undergraduate life turned out to be a wonderful, broadening social and intellectual experience.  I loved university life, so much so that I wanted a career at a university.  That goal led me to 5 years of graduate school in Illinois, followed by a job search for an assistant professorship position.

University research/teaching jobs are usually narrowly defined.  Consequently, one has to apply for jobs that match one’s specialty wherever they might be found.  I would have to go wherever a job could be found, so I sent my application to many US universities and one Canadian one.  I interviewed at 5 of them and got several offers, including one from the Canadian school. 

The prospect of working in Canada seemed like a mildly exotic adventure. Official bilingualism, funny police uniforms, and red mailboxes were novel to me.  Canada was different enough to be interesting, but not too far from family.  The Canadian university and city appealed to me, I liked my prospective colleagues, and the specifics of the job matched my expertise and interests. I accepted the Canadian offer, and some months later I found myself driving north in my brown VW Rabbit with my dog, plants, and belongings.

I had assumed that my expat experience would only last a couple of years.  I’d get established and, after a few years, move back to the US.  Life intervened however.  I liked my work and became very attached to Canada and my community.  I married and had children.  Now, many years later, I remain in Canada and have no plans to move back to the US, though I visit often and worry about US politics.

My path to expat-dom in Canada wasn’t planned.  Had it not been for that purchase of the Dodge and the Dodge News Magazine I never would’ve applied to Stanford.  Had I not experienced the campus culture there, I never would have sought a career in academics.  Because university job hunting requires a willingness to apply wherever the jobs are, I took a Canadian job in a city that became home.  A series of unpredictable events led a small-town Wyoming teenager to California, Illinois, and an expat life in Canada.

If you’re an American expat, what took you abroad? A job? Love? Politics? Feel free to add your reasons moving using the Comment feature below.

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