Now it’s quarter-life crisis #2. Having just been laid-off, I began re-prioritizing my life. This was an opportunity of a lifetime. With my 100 hour work weeks, I used to dream about what I would do if I could just take one day off.
Getting laid-off is not ideal, but I quickly realized that it answered my long time desire for (temporary) “early retirement” and an escape from a job that I was miserable at. The minute I entered my apartment, I tossed all my papers aside and jumped on my computer, immediately logging onto all the travel sites I could find.
I’d pretty much spent my entire adulthood in the United States without needing a car. Then I moved to Guam.
“It would be rare for me to arrive into a city and not have a friend who is there to give me a place to crash or a business connection,” said Justin Bedard, the executive director of the JUMP! Foundation. “I can safely say that a considerable amount of JUMP’s development has been fueled by my TCK network.”
In truth, the United States was one of the most foreign countries I had ever visited.
Brian Linton, 24, was recently named to Bloomberg Businessweek’s list of “America’s Best Young Entrepreneurs.” A lifelong lover of water, Linton decided that creating a business was the best way to have a real impact on cleaning the oceans in a globalized way.
Today, I live in a place where I have no say: the United States — and could have a say in places where I do not live: Switzerland, Canada and Iran. I hold a right to three votes that I believe many others are more entitled to, and have no entitlements where I think my vote should count.
The typical Third Culture Kid has moved at least once by their 5th birthday, and will move at least four times in their life. They speak at least two languages and have a 4-year college-degree. Data based on an informal online survey of 200 Third Culture Kids.
Denizen’s writers recall where they were when the Sept. 11 tragedy happened, and how it changed their lives.
As diplomat kids, missionary kids, corporate kids or whatever else living abroad, we were expected to represent the United States on our teenage shoulders with everything that we did. To others, we were America. To us, we were American by passport, having grown up abroad.
Denizen 