My friend Monika asked me when we first met how I got this job. I gave her the following instructions:

Step 1: University – What to study and where?

The first thing is to tell your family that you want to study Translation in Granada. Your mother, the most frugal woman in history—who used to buy you clothes three sizes too big so they’d last for years—will say that’s too expensive and that you should find a vocation you can study at the University of Seville. Please, drop that idea.

Look how nice English Philology would be, right at the Rectorate, and the bus from your neighborhood drops you almost at the faculty’s door.

Luckily, the Translation degree opens at UPO, an hour away from home by bus, and you dodge family drama—for now.

Step 2: Erasmus – You’re going where?

Next, you need to apply for Erasmus and break the news at home like it’s no big deal. If possible, do it on a Sunday over a family paella. With luck, your father will shout while spitting rice: “Where do you think you’re going, you idiot?”

Take a deep breath, empathize with him—he’s from another generation. His idea of going abroad is harvesting grapes in France and sleeping in barracks, back-to-back with his cousin. Then respond calmly: “Dad, I’m going to Germany on Erasmus, with or without your permission.”

This sentence will set the tone for many future conversations. You can’t go around asking your parents for permission if you plan to be an international professional who hops on planes like buses and handles a dozen languages and currencies.

At the airport, just before flying to Berlin, you’ll see a young woman, perfectly made up, in a business suit, with a silver four-wheeled suitcase. She’s on the phone talking about very important things, striding confidently in her stilettos. You’ll dream of being her one day.

When you land in Berlin, you’ll feel nothing like her. You’re lost, you don’t understand anything, and you get scammed by the taxi driver on your way to your apartment.

In Germany, try to get a foreign boyfriend—preferably German. You can’t have an international career without a partner from another country. After many failed attempts with Germans, you end up with a Chilean. Spanish-speaking isn’t ideal, but at least you’ll learn about culture and eat delicious food.

At this point, you’ll face a crossroads. With the 2008 global economic crisis, returning to Spain might be a huge mistake when you could fight to transfer your credits to the Freie Universität and finish your degree there.

However, the idea of surviving in Berlin working as a waitress or dishwasher while studying loses its charm after a few nights picking up bottles off a nightclub floor.

Step 3: Graduation – Now what?

Go back to Spain. You only have two years left, and between scholarships and tutoring, you save enough to return to Germany after graduation with a Spanish language assistant program at a high school.

Your Chilean boyfriend will reappear, but not for long. You’ll realize how lucky you are to be a European citizen. The idea of getting married so he can stay will come up often. Don’t get married.

He’ll return to his country, and when the school year ends, you’ll go to Chile too. Announcing your move to Latin America will bring back the infamous Erasmus phrase. Your mother will say she’s going to hide your passport, and your father will say people emigrate to better countries, like Germany—not worse ones, like Chile.

It’s important to already have your one-way ticket before announcing anything. Your practical parents won’t want you to waste the €1,000 it cost.

In Chile, you’ll work wherever you can: hotels, teaching, translations, conference interpreting… At some point, you’ll suspect your work visa is no longer valid. It was for your first job, and you’ve been at another company for months.

But the key part of this stage is spending months translating incredibly boring mining industry tenders, eight hours a day, locked in your apartment.

Step 4: Foreign Trade – What even is that?

We reach another turning point where you ask yourself several times a day what the hell you’re doing in Chile and why you ever thought studying translation was a good idea. If you don’t ask yourself these questions constantly, you won’t reach the next stage: applying for another scholarship that forces you to return to Spain—cue another breakup.

Over 1,000 people apply for the scholarship, and there are only 60 spots. Besides the written exam, you’ll have to take tests in three languages. In the Italian oral exam, you’ll make a fool of yourself. This humbling moment will do you good.

Despite that, you’ll get one of the 60 spots, and during the first part of the scholarship—the foreign trade course—you’ll make great friends who later become a solid network for jobs “in your field.” You still don’t really know what foreign trade is, and by the end of the course, you’re not much clearer, but the important thing is you have two years of well-paid work ahead.

The first year, you’ll work at the Commercial Office of the Spanish Embassy in Canada, promoting Spanish companies wanting to enter that market. At the same time, a polar vortex hits North America, and temperatures in Toronto drop to around -30ºC. Surprisingly, your suitcase fits winter clothes, snow boots, and also a bikini and shorts. By now, you’re an expert at packing your life into a 20 kg suitcase.

But the cold doesn’t matter. It finally feels like you’re living the dream: you go to the office in business suits, speak English all day, and take your first solo business trip—to Vancouver.

The glamour fades when, just before entering the convention center, you spill ketchup on your shirt and spend the whole day hiding the stain behind your lanyard.

Step 5: Finding your calling by accident

In the final months before returning to Spain, you have to choose an Andalusian company for the second phase of the scholarship. You do many interviews, and for some reason, the one that attracts you most is a university.

You don’t see yourself selling pipes, strawberries, or olive oil—no matter how much money, suits, or business trips it involves.

But you do see yourself in the international office of a university, motivating young people to do what you did: stand up for themselves, live without permission, change their lives, transform themselves, search until they find—or search without finding…

The job will involve lots of paperwork and selection processes, but also many therapy sessions with Spanish students unsure about going on Erasmus, hospital visits with international students, trips to immigration offices, airport pickups and drop-offs, announcements of good and bad news, tears of joy and sorrow.

You explain all this to Monika that day, and then you become friends. She’ll return to Spain to do a master’s, and you’ll pick her up at the airport. She’ll say she doesn’t know how to thank you. Ask her to one day pick up a foreign girl at an airport.