A Working Woman

I’ve finished my second week as a member of the Chinese workforce. My official title (business card and all) is Admission Manager, Beijing City International School (BCIS).

It was kind of serendipitous how I came upon the job. I noticed the ad for it in a English language magazine that someone just happened to pass onto me when we visited Beijing to look for housing in November. I had been skimming for apartment rental ads when I happened upon the job listings and saw the one for the BCIS Admissions Manager. When we returned to New York, I submitted my resume, mostly as a lark, but also with the worry of how I would be occupying my time once we came to reside in Beijing. I thought it would provide a more authentic China experience for me. A few days later I was asked to submit an application and to come in for an interview when I arrived in Beijing. I went through several rounds of interviews, some contract negotiations and finally began work on March 15th.

The Admissions Office is part of the Communications and Development Department (CDD) so, in addition to taking people on tours and processing their paperwork, I will be responsible for doing outreach and marketing to make our school better known to the expat crowd to attract more students. We have about 600 students with a building capacity of about 1200. I am supposed to supervise two women whose primary responsibility it is to lead the tours, field phone calls and accept the admissions applications and process them. I say supposed to because at the moment they are the ones who are teaching me the ropes! It’s an IB curriculum school, primary through Diploma, that was founded 5 years ago; relatively new among the other international schools here. If you want more info you can check out the web site www.bcis.cn.

I am the only western person in my all female, eight person department (CDD) and the only native English speaker. Before I arrived, all of the inter-office communication was conducted in Chinese. Most of it is still conducted in Chinese unless people are speaking to me or we are having team meetings. As a result, it is hard to pick up on the nuances one gathers from a conversation among co-workers. Everyone speaks English, though, some better than others. Surprisingly, I don’t feel uncomfortable amid the Chinese language. I can pick out words I know here and there, but I don’t know enough to get even the context of a conversation. An incentive for me to study my Chinese and learn more quickly! Yet, being in a western style school, where teachers and administrators are primarily western (British, Australian, American), seems very familiar and comfortable. The IB curriculum is inquiry based and there are a lot of hands-on manipulatives and demonstrations of mastery. All the talk from my school board years. I have been impressed with the quality of education and dedication of the personnel who I have met thus far.

My hours are from 8 to 5 with one hour for lunch. That being said, it usually is a much longer day. The commute is about 45 minutes each way. I leave the house around 7 or 7:05, walk 10 minutes to the subway and take if for 4 stops and then walk about 20 minutes to the school. By the time we finish with work and team meetings, it is generally about 5:15 to 5:45, sometimes later.

There was an Expat Fair in Beijing at the end of my second week working and I was scheduled to work at our booth. The purpose of the fair was to provide information about all the goods and services expats may need or want in Beijing. So, I was manning our booth with a fellow admissions person and a Chinese language teacher. In my case, talk about the blind leading the blind! No, actually I have learned a great deal about our program and school and feel very comfortable talking about it and answering questions.

This weekend was the first warm, spring-like weekend we have had so far. Too bad we couldn’t take the time to explore the city ourselves. Steve was committed to attend a going away party for a staff member in his department (a trip to a local amusement park and dinner, really) on Saturday and I had to work at the Expat Fair for my second shift on Sunday afternoon. Maybe we’ll be better coordinated next weekend!