Ian Pilarczyk has been Associate Director of Fletcher’s LLM program since before the first students even arrived.  Sadly for us, he will be moving on to a new opportunity.  Here, Ian tells us about his departure, with his signature (in the Admissions blog, anyway) use of poetry.

“On Saying Goodbye To My Office in Mugar 250” (with apologies to F.R. Scott)

Several weeks ago, I accepted a new position at Boston University School of Law.  It will pose new opportunities and challenges and reunite me with my alma mater, but leaving Fletcher is also the definition of “bittersweet.”  In an ideal world, the new job would have come after the current LLM class graduated in May, so that I could have seen them through the end of the school year, travelled with them to Talloires for our Capstone and celebrated with them at commencement — but we rarely have control over timing, and I knew this was an opportunity I wanted to pursue.  This past Saturday, the LLM students held a dinner in my honor at one of my favorite restaurants, Elephant Walk in Cambridge.  It was such a nice gesture, so generous yet typical of them — and emblematic of why it’s hard to say goodbye.  I hope they know they will be missed.

For the past few weeks, I have been slowly vacating my office, packing box after box of books, removing the trappings and trophies of professional life off of shelves and walls.  As Canadian poet F.R. Scott wrote about emptying his law school office, his “sanctuary” for many years:

They are carting away all my books and papers.
My pictures are stacked in an ugly pile in the corner.
There is murder in my cathedral.

As I pack up, I come across a clay figurine given to me by one of our students from Uzbekistan, myriad knick-knacks that coincidentally are replete with elephant motifs, and files full of notes  from when I first started here.  I realize that my filing system, as organized as I think it is, has an internal “logic” that will doubtlessly confound my successor:  it’s a special challenge to leave things in a way will allow someone else to seamlessly start where you left off.

Miserable vandals, stuffing me into your cartons,
This is a functioning office, all things are in order,
Or in that better disorder born of long usage.
I alone can command it.

My successor arrived this week, which allowed us a few pleasant days to work together before I leave today.  I am delighted that she is already a member of the Fletcher community:  Susan Simone ‘09, is a graduate of last year’s LLM class. She is a gifted lawyer and enthusiastic alumnus, and I am happy to call her a friend.  In her capable hands, the program will doubtlessly continue to flourish and grow, and knowing I am passing the office keys along to her makes leaving a little easier.

… I stand again on new frontiers.
Forgive this moment of weakness, this backward perspective.
Old baggage, I wish you goodbye and good housing.
I strip for more climbing.

Goodbye, Fletcher.  Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your family these past two years.

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Last week, I asked Jeff (our newest staffer) to reflect on his Fletcher travels.  Here’s what he wrote:

Where has the fall gone?  Every year I feel the same way when October draws to a close.  Since graduating from college, I’ve held jobs that send me out on the road during the fall months.  What that means for me is:  no alumni/homecoming weekends, limited time for apple picking, and a jam-packed social calendar on the days when I am in town.  That being said, I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

The last couple months, I’ve had the opportunity to travel to New York City, followed by Toronto, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.   Each trip was fantastic, but there really aren’t any exciting stories to share – nothing compared to Kristen’s tour of Asia last year or Peter dodging wild fires in 2007.  But I’m happy to say that the locations I visited this fall were a nice change from the travel of my previous job.

My life in corporate recruiting brought me to the same university campus once or twice a week for the majority of the fall months.  While that got old quickly, I do miss the amazing restaurants that Philadelphia has to offer, and also the budget I had to “play with.”  Despite the gastric pleasures and the larger wallet of corporate life, I don’t regret my switch to Fletcher.  Meeting so many great prospective students and alumni during my travels has been amazing.  I have enjoyed hearing stories from alums regarding their Fletcher past, as well as descriptions of what they are doing now.  Alumni go out of their way to help the School, and from what I can tell, it’s because they really value their Fletcher experience.

So, fall is flying by, but it’s been great so far!  I was able to visit friends who I hadn’t seen in quite some time, and also to try some new restaurants (Eggspectations in Toronto, Rockit in Chicago, and Sushi Roku in LA) and visit some old favorites (JG Melon in NY and In-N-Out Burger in SF).  Now I’m preparing for my next trip — North Carolina and Virginia — to host information sessions at various universities with colleagues from some other great schools.  If you happen to be in the area, check out our travel calendar for the week of November 8th and I hope you’ll drop by.

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My daily schedule has finally cleared enough to focus on the blog and finish the round of staff introductions that I started in September.  Today, I’m giving Liz a little more space than I provided to my other admissions pals.  And she earns it — Liz is the first person most visitors to the office will meet.  And whereas most of us started in “international” and ended up in higher education administration, Liz took a different pathway to both.  Here’s her story:

I graduated from the University of Southern Maine with a degree in Business Administration.  Degree in hand, my first “real world” job was with USA TODAY, and before you ask:  No, I wasn’t a journalist.  (It’s funny how that’s the first thing people think of when you tell them you worked for a newspaper.)  I worked in Circulation, the behind-the-scenes operation required to make a newspaper work.  Our office handled the printing, sales, distribution, and customer service for the New England area.

I started out as an Administrative Coordinator in USA TODAY’s Marketing department (marketing, in the newspaper industry, being a fancy word for sales), handling any and all paperwork, purchasing, data processing, and general support for three managers.  I find enjoyment in routine, and in the structured chaos that exists in an admin position (including what others may consider mundane, such as paperwork and data processing).  After a year or so, I moved to the Customer Service side of the office, which allowed me to experience the unpredictability of working directly with customers — it made for an exciting and sometimes frustrating day, but it kept me on my toes and taught me how to juggle competing work demands.  In addition to my 9-to-5 job, I remained highly active in my National Sorority which you’ve previously read about.  Needless to say, I rarely had a dull moment with either position.

Fortunately or unfortunately (depending on how you look at it), after three years at USA TODAY, I was forced to think about my future career, when I was one of many customer service reps who were laid off.  And so, after I had finished crying over being laid off for the first time ever, I started to think about what I liked to do.  I realized that a return to higher education administration was the way for me to go.  I loved my time in college:  I loved working with students when I was a student worker in a university office and when I was a Resident Assistant; and I loved the sense of community that higher ed brought, and that didn’t exist for me at the newspaper.

This brings me to where I am now at The Fletcher School.  Working in the Admissions Office as the Staff Assistant has allowed me to get my foot back in the door of higher education.  I’m in a position where I utilize my admin and customer service skills from USA TODAY, as well as the event planning experience I gained from my sorority.  I don’t know if Admissions is my final stopping place in higher education, as it’s a brand new area for me, but I am enjoying what I do here every day.  I still have the structured chaos that comes with being in an admin role, and I truly enjoy the spontaneity and unpredictable nature of working with prospective applicants and current students.

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Though this work is a kind of second (or later) career for most of us in Fletcher’s Admissions Office, we share a common long-standing interest in international issues. Continuing to introduce the staff, today several of us answer the Supplementary Essay question: Tell us more about how you first became interested in international affairs, or in pursuing an international career.

Jeff:
I opened the mailbox. There it was.  The letter I had been waiting to receive for what seemed like forever – information regarding my first-year college roommate.  I was shocked:  Kenya?  What would I have in common with someone from Kenya?  Looking back a few weeks after school started, I realized how ridiculous and naïve I was.  My roommate, as well as my hall mates from a plethora of countries (Puerto Rico, Argentina, Honduras, Pakistan, Singapore, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Germany, Latvia, Philippines) and many parts of the U.S., opened my eyes to all the world has to offer.  As we all began a new chapter in our lives, we were able to teach each other many things about our heritage and culture.   I found myself eager to learn as much as I could about everyone’s countries.  While at school, I took classes related to international affairs, and I also joined some campus cultural clubs.  Since that time, I have had the opportunity to travel to many parts of the world and see firsthand all I learned though my classes and from my friends.  My thirst for knowledge of other cultures continues to grow and I look forward to learning about, and traveling to, as many places as possible in the years to come.

Kristen:
My interest in international affairs actually has very boring roots:  a seventh-grade Spanish class. I lived in a small town, and all middle-schoolers had to choose one elective class. My parents were much more far-sighted than I was (as is common at that age), and “encouraged” me to choose Spanish over drama.  I loved it, and I developed a curiosity about all of the hispanoparlante countries. This initial linguistic interest led to travels (Guatemala, Mexico) which, in turn, led to study abroad (Spain), which then led to living abroad (Argentina).  I was in Argentina from 2000-2001, when the economy experienced a steady slide downward, resulting in a crippling economic crash.  All of a sudden, my fascination with a foreign culture morphed into a more robust interest in how the Argentine politics, economy, business, and law, contributed to the crisis.  This is a story common to many Fletcher students, where a seed of interest in a language or a culture blossoms into the full-fledged interest in a region or issue.  In my case, I was able to follow this mind-opening time abroad with a fascinating job in Corporate Social Responsibility. I was able to work with large international companies dealing with the very issues that sparked my interest in Argentina: the intersection of culture, politics, law, and business.

Peter:
With a month or so left before my college graduation and faced with more than a few career uncertainties, a friend told me about an opportunity to spend the summer in rural France, teaching English at a language immersion camp.  I applied for the position looking for an adventure, a new learning experience, and as a way to stall the rapid encroachment of “real life” for a few more months.  I spent the summer living in a former convent in a tiny town in the foothills of the Pyrenees teaching English, as well as baseball, the proper way to carve a jack-o’-lantern, and the lyrics to “Country Roads,” to groups of French pre-teens.  After one summer in the Pyrenees, and another month or so of backpacking with my Eurail pass, my future career path became much clearer.  While it would not necessarily involve pumpkins (or John Denver, for that matter), I knew it would need to involve education and be inherently international.  Since that summer, I’ve taught English in France, Japan, and Poland, coordinated short-term school-to-school partnership exchanges, and managed State Department grant-funded exchange programs for high school students from Germany, the U.S., the Middle East, the Balkans, and Eurasia.  A few years ago, my path led me to Fletcher, where I’ve found a career that fulfills both criteria and a diverse and engaging community that always keeps life interesting.

Roxana:
My personal interest in international affairs did not come into focus until my senior year of high school when we had to choose which colleges to apply to.  When I was forced to think of what I wanted to study in college, the first thing that came to mind was international affairs. It was something I grew up in, and a subject I realized that I would enjoy and be good at. My first personal exposure to international affairs was actually at the age of three, when my parents decided that my dad would become a Foreign Service Officer for the U.S. State Department. My parents thought it would be a great learning experience for my brother and me, as well as a good transition to something new following my dad’s career in the Air Force. Growing up, I inadvertently became a young diplomat representing America (without pay) in several countries – Greece, Nigeria, Germany, Morocco, Cyprus and Bahrain.  These experiences would become beneficial in college with my major in International Relations & Comparative Religion, and then when I started working in Admissions at Fletcher.

As for me:
It’s all in the packaging, right?  So I could say that I first became interested in international affairs when, as a child, I first traveled to Europe with my family.  Or when I studied American Foreign Policy in college.  Or when I studied French, or Spanish, or Chinese.  But, in fact, I don’t think I really knew that I had bumped into a lasting interest until I was home from China and job-searching.  At that point, it was clear to me that I just wasn’t ready to let go.  I had been “bitten by the China bug” and I wanted to carry my hard-earned knowledge into my career.  My first post-China job was with a Hong Kong-based company that organized trade shows in China.  An MBA and a relocation to Boston later, I started working at Fletcher on a year-long special program for mid-career Chinese managers.  Admissions is my second Fletcher career, but I can’t imagine work without an international component.

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Probably, until yesterday, all you knew about us was that we live in the Boston area and work in Admissions for the Fletcher School.  Today, learn something new about Laurie, Peter, Roxana, and me, all in answer to the application essay topic:  Share something about yourself to help the Admissions Committee develop a more complete picture of who you are.

Laurie:
Like many members of the Fletcher community, I love wine!  I discovered my love for wine right after college.  I began by tasting, and then became interested in other aspects, such as grape growing, wine production, wine and food pairing, wine regions and history, wine laws, and the business of wine.   After years of tasting and learning on my own, I decided to go to wine school in Boston.  I recently completed an Advanced Certificate in Wine and Spirits through the U.K.-based Wine & Spirits Education Trust.  While I am not enrolled in any wine classes right now, I do participate in a wine club with my former classmates.  We meet monthly to taste (everyone brings a bottle that costs less $15) and discuss wine topics.  In September we will be tasting and comparing Rieslings from the Alsace region in France, Germany, New York State, Canada and New Zealand.  Later this fall we will be discussing the book Wine and War: The French, the Nazis and the Battle for France’s Greatest Treasure.

Peter:
Reading countless application essays has somehow had a paralyzing effect on me when the tables were suddenly turned.  How can I write about my interest in live music in Boston, in experimenting with new pulled-pork recipes for my slow-cooker, or in my strange cultural fascination with all things Southern (U.S.) and Eastern (Europe), when I’ve read so many essays from prospective students about really important things?  That said, I have to choose something or risk getting on Jessica’s bad side.  So, I’ll touch on one hobby that I have participated in since I was a small child:  Though I’ve never been one to enjoy exercise for the sake of exercise, I’ve always played soccer — from early recreational leagues, through middle school, high school, and college intramural leagues, until now, where I play on two different teams:  a Sunday morning men’s team and a Monday evening co-ed team.  The latter is a source of amusement for my colleagues as it involves a half-hour drive out of town to play games that sometimes don’t finish until after midnight.  When I walk (sometimes limp) into the office on Tuesday mornings, a bit groggy and searching for my second cup of coffee, Jessica never fails to ask how my game went, and shakes her head when I tell her that I didn’t get to bed until after 1:00 a.m.  So, while I haven’t built orphanages in Southeast Asia or biked across the country, I do enjoy a good late-night soccer game.

Roxana:
Through junior high and high school I played a variety of sports, and I was very good at all of them.  I played softball, baseball, and basketball, was a sprinter on the track team and played varsity volleyball, becoming the only freshman on the team that year and team captain in my senior year.  Being athletic and competitive helped shape the person I am today, as it pushed me to excel and strive for the top of anything I tried out for in life. Playing sports made me assertive, and gave me a healthy level of competitiveness and discipline, as practice was held almost every day after school, and forced me to balance homework, socializing, and family time.  It has impacted my professional life by teaching me teamwork and leadership and to take losses in stride.  I miss playing sports but have taken those skills and applied them to other aspects of my life.

And, last, me.  (I can’t be the only one to ignore my own assignment, though it’s hard to think of anything I haven’t already shared via the blog.)
As a trailing edge baby-boomer, my taste in music is more rooted in hippie than hip-hop, but Josh and Kayla (my son and daughter) have exposed me to, and educated me about, their music — and I have come to enjoy it.  My initial objective was only to learn enough to hold up my end of the conversation, but they frequently quiz me to make sure I’m paying attention.  I’m familiar with hip-hop’s most legendary, as well as current, performers — and I stopped by the campus with Kayla to hear Ludacris when he played Spring Fling at Tufts last spring.  I pick and choose what I listen to, and I trust that my kids will know when to filter the message from the music.  Meanwhile, their success in bringing my musical taste into the modern era makes them proud.  Yes, yes y’all and you don’t stop.  To the beat y’all and ya don’t stop…

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It has been a while (and a few personnel changes) since the members of the Admissions staff last introduced themselves via the blog.  At our summer off-site retreat, we decided that the introductions should take the form of brief answers to the questions/prompts applicants can select for the Supplementary Essay.  Urgent note to blog readers:  Our answers are not meant to serve as models for your own essays!  But here is what my admissions pals wrote in answer to:  Share something about yourself to help the Admissions Committee develop a more complete picture of who you are. In almost alphabetical order, here we go:

Jeff:
What a feeling – pressure, popping ears, gliding through the air and then a sudden drop.  Turbulence is my favorite part of a plane ride.  As the plane drops, my stomach enters my throat and a jarring ride ensues.  Strangely enough, that is the only point at which I am able to fall asleep on a plane, regardless of the length of the flight.  Turbulence doesn’t bother me in the least.  It’s not that I am carefree or reckless; I just don’t see the need to stress over something that is completely out of my control.  I sit back, close my eyes, and enjoy the ride.

Kristen:
I was raised in three different areas of the United States – the Northeast, South, and West — each for a significant period of time. I was born in New England to parents from Connecticut and Massachusetts. We then moved to Texas, and finally I attended high school in Colorado, which I still consider home. Working at Fletcher, we often hear fascinating stories about students who have lived on five different continents or in ten different countries, but sometimes we fail to see the diversity in culture, socioeconomics, language, landscape, and politics inherent in the United States. For me, having been raised in three such distinct environments has helped inform my world-view, or, perhaps more accurately stated, my nation-view.  I have seen incredible variety in the way that my friends and family from each area approach the same situation, or view the same hot topic.  At times, it feels like a city-dweller from the U.S. North has more in common with her South American urbanite counterpart than with a denizen of the rural U.S. West.  This perspective has been invaluable for me as I have the good fortune to work with students from around the globe.

Liz:
Second semester of my sophomore year at the University of Southern Maine, I joined a sorority — something I would have scoffed at just a year earlier, and that my family and non-Greek friends still don’t understand.  After befriending a number of the sisters of Kappa Delta Phi, I was sold on their message of community, philanthropy, and sisterhood.  The sorority gave me so much — from new friendships to self-confidence and pride — that when I graduated in 2004, I joined the Board of Directors of the national sorority organization.  Over the last five years, I’ve served in many roles on the Board and each has taught me something new about myself.  Much of what I know about leadership, conflict resolution, time management, public speaking, networking, and interpersonal relations, I’ve learned from the sorority.  It’s also what motivated me to return to higher education as a career, when I was laid off from my previous job in the newspaper industry.  Although a time will come when I’ll step away from such an active role to focus on other areas of my personal and professional life, Kappa is now and always will be an important and defining part of my life.

That’s all for today.  Tomorrow we’ll hear from Laurie, Peter, Roxana, and me.

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On Tuesday, I returned to the office following two weeks of travels.  Along with my husband (Paul), son (Josh), and daughter (Kayla), we spent time with family in London, and a week (accompanied by Paul’s mum) in Italy.  We visited Pisa, Florence, and Venice at a pace that suited us, but might dismay true art lovers and Italophiles.  For us, we were happy so long as the day’s activities left time for a gelato stop.  Or two.  I tried just about every flavor combination that interested me:  Hazelnut and chocolate.  Coffee and chocolate.  Coconut and chocolate.  Berries and chocolate.  Berries and peach (no chocolate). Yummy, every one!

One phenomenon that interested me was the universal use of English.  The first time I went to Italy was about 20 years ago (to Rome) and we fumbled along with a combination of Italian nouns (easily learned, while verbs are so challenging), French, and occasional English.  Though many years have passed, and we were in a different region (one with more tourists relative to the resident population), it was still striking how much easier it was to get by without ever uttering a word of Italian.  Even the French were speaking English!  To be honest, I love the sound of Italian and enjoy being forced to try a new language, and I missed that opportunity.  There’s no denying, though, that it’s easier to get around when language is less of a challenge.

I wasn’t the only Admissions staffer on the road.  Earlier this month, Peter kicked off the wave of vacations with a week in Ontario.  Laurie followed when she went to Austria where she, her husband (John), and daughter (Emily) spent two weeks, joined there by a Fletcher alum and family.  And Roxana was off in Lebanon for a friend’s wedding.  But now, we’re back to full force, including Kristen, who has completed her maternity leave.  Must be time to start a new admissions cycle!

And if the return of our wayward staff members weren’t evidence enough, there are the new students to remind us that summer is coming to an end.  This is the second (and final) week of the MIB program’s “pre-session” class in Strategic Management.  This weekend, our new students will arrive, and Orientation starts on Monday.  The School is starting to hum again!

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The summer is a slow news time for the blog — thus the weekly updates on my weekend activities.  Today I thought I’d switch themes.

Back in November, I read about a report by the Institute on International Education that said China is now fifth on the list of countries where U.S. students go to study abroad.  I regularly talk to students and applicants on their way to or from China, so I don’t find the news surprising…but it’s still amazing.  I spent two years, 1981-83, teaching English and studying Chinese in Beijing, a time when there were so few “Westerners” in China that we would run into each other wherever we went.  Three days on a train to some distant destination, and I’d find other Beijing-based Americans, Canadians, or Europeans at the same tourist site.

A contributing factor was that our movement was very restricted.  I wasn’t allowed to climb on a train to anywhere without a travel permit, and there was a very short list of cities that I could ever receive a permit to visit.  The students from the U.S. or other countries now in China have much greater freedom of movement.

The living experience for these many Americans in China is also very different from my time.  We were all accommodated in dormitories or compounds for foreigners — virtually no one rented an apartment in the general housing market.  At the same time as this arrangement isolated me from general society, it also gave me the opportunity to meet students from all over the world — a silver lining.

A few years ago, I visited the campus where I had lived.  What used to be a sleepy little neighborhood, where the only street sound at night was the clicking of electric buses, is now a region tightly connected to greater Beijing by highways and the subway.  Always a hub of intellectual activity, the area is now a technology center with gleaming office buildings.

I have no doubt that life is much more fun for Americans in Beijing now than it was back in the day, but I appreciate having had the opportunity to watch Beijing pull itself out of the long shadow of the Cultural Revolution.  The news is filled daily with the evidence of change in China — I’m glad to have my own personal perspective on all this progress.

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I have just a few minutes before my admissions pals will arrive at my house for our off-campus retreat.  While we won’t be far from Fletcher at our “Conference Center,” my living room provides a casual setting to do some planning for the coming year.

This being the Fletcher Admissions staff, much of our pre-retreat planning was focused on food.  Who would bring what?  We tried to convince Jeff (the new guy) that he should be contributing expensive gourmet treats for the rest of us, but in the end we settled on a menu of pastries for breakfast, and salads, bread, and cheese for lunch.

For those trying to reach us, the Office will reopen tomorrow, when the staff will be energized and filled with new ideas.

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We’re super happy to be fully staffed again.  Just this Tuesday, Jeff Carbone joined us as the new Associate Director, filling the position that Kate left earlier in the spring.  He brings experience both in admissions and corporate recruitment, and we’re excited to add him to the team.

Jeff has spent most of his first Fletcher week dashing from office to office, learning what everyone does around here.  (My turn to talk with him comes in about 10 minutes.)  He’ll soon be up to speed, and you could be hearing from him if you correspond with the office, or meeting him if you visit.

Welcome, Jeff!

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