Helpful alums widen global options
By Daniel Clifford ('03)

Daniel Clifford washes down dim sum in Guangzhou, Guangdong, in southern China.

By the time you read this, I will have been living abroad for four years. I've lived in five countries for six months or more. I've successfully sold freelance travel articles in Spain and found I didn't like it. I've struggled as a copy editor at an English-language newspaper in China and found I loved it. You should know: my path of opportunities has been guided by the signposts of alumni.

After six months of saving money after graduation, I stepped on a plane in January 2004 and made my way to Spain, where good friend and classmate Khloe Barton ('03) was living and working. Within a week, she had helped me find some work and an apartment.

Alas, it's hard to call it paradise without an appropriate income, and when another CU alum beckoned me to China, I went. Justin Mitchell ('78) was leaving the Shenzhen Daily and recommended it as a position for a recent graduate, and I took the job.

Halfway through a year in China, my future as yet very undetermined, a Chinese colleague received an e-mail from an alum of the school where she had studied in Europe about a new master's program called Erasmus Mundus Journalism and Media Within Globalization: The European Perspective. She mentioned it to me, and I applied. I was accepted for two years of fully funded study in three European countries.

I have finished the program and signed a contract to work as a copy editor for Thomson Financial News in its London bureau. For now, I suffer the intolerable stress of UK bureaucratic nonsense.

This is one example why working and studying abroad is at the same time terribly exhausting and fantastically rewarding. The most trying part is being away from family and friends … and maybe the Colorado microbrews. On balance, I have tasted brews and made friends from nearly every time zone.

I love the pure adventure of it all. A genuine desire to try new things, specifically food and drink, is essential to this lifestyle. My favorite pastime is going on an urban trek, exploring small side streets for peculiar shops and cafes. I recommend everyone try it. I don't pretend everyone is meant for it. Just go.