Drifter Senior Grade

Drifter Senior Grade

Scene: meeting new person at social event in drifters home country

Me: Hi, I’m Max
Hot Chick: Hi I’m a hot chick.
Me: Cool, how’s that working out for you, like, being really hot?
HC: (giggles and gladtalk flirting continues) So where do you live?
Me: Well actually I live in Japan (HC looks impressed pupils enlarge, etc)
HC: WOW, that’s great! What do you do there?
Me: Well, I’m an assistant English teacher…
HC: Oh yeah? Uhhh… I’m going to go talk to that rich looking guy.
Me: Barman… Hit me.

That’s the unfortunate situation of the Drifter Junior Grade.

Let’s see how this plays for the Drifter Senior Grade:

HC: (giggle) So where do you live?
Me: Well the BBC has us on the go a lot. I was interviewing Iraqi members of the Al-Armani Jihad Martyrs Brigade when suddenly the battle for Falluja broke out… we got some great footage, but it cost us our best cameraman. He’s…he’s…he’s in a better place now.
HC: Your place or mine?

Around the late 20s/early 30s threshold, the male existential crisis is either resolved or metastasized into full-blown schizophrenia. At this point in life he should have something to show for it: a wife/girlfriend, an advanced degree of some kind, a skill, an adventure completed, a language learned, or at very least a sweet car. Drifter junior grade has little to show for and, embarrassingly, has to crash at his parents' (or more successful friend's pad) to get back on his feet. As he lays awake at night in his high school bed, or friend’s couch, he realizes that the possibility of becoming a Master of the Universe has passed. His options are two: he can settle for the BSChump role or graduate to Drifter Senior Grade.

like DJGs, DSGs live abroad, but are not a low level English as a Second Language teacher. A DSG can still work in the ESL/EFL field as a full-fledged university teacher on par with other native teachers, or he can be a Director or Studies at a language school, but he cannot be in classes doing the same work as a Drifter Junior Grade (DJG). But most likely a DSG has left the low status ESL world. The DSG is more likely a foreign correspondent journalist, or a MA/PhD researcher (with a grant) studying something specific like migratory patterns of penguins in heat. Other jobs are also respectable for DSGs. For example real-time translator, black belt aikido instructors, UN atttache, lecturer/writer, quantum physics professor, or deep sea explorer. If he's a buinesss minded type maybe he’s an importer/exporter as his long nights as a DJG studying kanji, Russian, and reading The Economist paid off. You basically able to say things like, "I wonder how this is going to affect the DAX and the "Footsie," and sound like you know what your talking about.

DSGs are pretty damn sweet byt they don’t chill at the same places as DJGs, instead of hostels and guesthouses they meet at storied hotels with names that start with “The”. “The Continental” or “The Sir Francis Drake”. Think Michael Cain in “The Quiet American” or that academic fellow in Dan Brown novels. They're smart as a whip, and played their cards right, but they're not famous or anything. Basically, Kerouac would have respected them before they a got all pretentious and bought a bed.

Level of Bad-ass-itude
High. You’ve not only seen it all, you participated in or ‘covered it’. You’re also perfectly fluent in at least one language. People you grew up with don’t know you anymore and your never been asked to be someone’s best man.

Toys
A 35mm camera and your grandfather’s wartime .38 (in case things get out of hand). You've also got a Kevlar-plated laptop, your prized collection of tribal masks, mahogany bookshelves replete with your ‘works’, and a signed picture with you and your mentor.

Clothes
Earthy and tweed coats and corduroy slacks if you’re the academic type or blood-spattered vests with lots of pockets if you’re the foreign correspondent type. You always smoke a pipe or a cigar and wear the cap you bought in Edinbrough.

Car
It’s unimportant to you but it was made in Sweden. When the weather is nice you ride a bicycle similar to the one you had when you went to Saborne

Chicks
Cute smart undergrads quote you constantly, but you grew out of dating them when you were a PhD candidate.

Cash
You’ve got a comfortable apartment, but you blew a wad on that authentic Hanzo sword. You think being rich is uuchk...so jeune c'est pa.

Worries
How your recent work is ‘received’, insurgencies, how the ‘administration’ keep screwing you over. Grant money. Currency deflations.

Vacation time
You go to major universities (not in Las Vegas) for conferences and look forward to seeing the near-by museums because the (insert European name) collection is visiting.

Drug
You used to smoke pot and talk about books in college when the frat boys got drunk. You still smoke occasionally when the book club gets together. You like scotch, imported beer and whatever spirit is popular in the county you live in.

Politics
by the New York Times

Religion
Totally depends, but you're first and foremost a thinking man, those with blind faith are worrried that you're a 'person with a lot of questions' and pray for you.

Friends
Academics, contacts, members of the international blah-blah-blah organization. Not average Joe’s, they think you’re a prick.