The Overseas Pull...or Push?

Last night I was on a girl date with one of my good friends who is also a self confessed sufferer of twenty something syndrome and midway through our Pinot Noir (Mt Difficulty, Central Otago if you're interested- and you should be because it's very good), we got talking about travel. We both ended up at the same conclusion: that in your twenties, travel (which should inspire feelings of freedom) actually feels like an obligation at times.

Now I have a confession...I'm nearing my mid twenties and not only have I not had an overseas experience but (prepare to gasp) I don't have any set-in-stone plans to partake in one (in the near future anyway). I actually feel a little guilty admitting to that. It makes me feel like less of a twenty something- and actually less like a proper kiwi girl.

It was a great relief to discover that it isn't just me that feels like in New Zealand we must go on an OE and we must do it before we're 30. At 24 I feel like my travelogical clock is ticking!

Some twenty somethings feel this pressure so strongly that they map their entire life plan around their overseas experience. My friend had a flatmate who was so determined that she would find the love of her life overseas that she turned down many a suitor because it 'just wasn't going to happen' here in NZ- I think she's still single.

I guess you could say that the OE is an expectation pressed upon twenty somethings largely by New Zealand media. Oh but on one condition- you must sacrifice any career ambition and work in a filthy pub.

You see if you leave the country and actually manage to get a job in your skilled field then you're the baddy who has given up all loyalty to New Zealand (cue the magazine style current affairs program harping on about the 'brain drain'). Working in a pub on the other hand is painted as the ultimate rite of passage on your OE. This is why so many of us who have potentially spent years establishing a career in New Zealand suddenly settle for cleaning up spew and pulling handles in London.

It's a clever ploy to benefit the New Zealand economy really because one can only take so many drunken Englishmen leering at one's breasts (and people who insist that "awryt" and "innit" are valid words) before New Zealand starts looking pretty damn good.

In saying all this, the fact that OE's are held in such high regard in New Zealand is quite awesome. You can take comfort that when you come crawling back nursing an exhausted credit card, expired visa and a liver that has lost the will to go on, at least your job prospects are improved.

As you embark on the enevitable job hunt you can now include your overseas experience on your CV. Sure, the majority of your experience probably involved drinking yourself into a stupor and sleeping with randoms but these are mere details! Yes, when you return you are instantly regarded as more worldly and thus a more attractive employee- magic.

Not only that, but the OE also serves as a great way to put off the dreaded alternative to revelling in twenty something syndrome- settling down. Spose I should get packing...one of these days.