The work trip: pleasure and pain

International education is a beautiful industy. Like many others, I ended up in International Ed because I did an exchange at uni, got hooked, and ended up working in an international office.

There's just nothing like helping Aussies to study overseas and seeing the passion an infectious enthusiasm that they come home with.

As the name would suggest, working in international education can involve quite a bit of travel - both domestic and international. The people who work these roles, sometimes referred to in the industry as 'Road Warriors', can spend days, weeks and even months away from home at a time going about the business of helping students circulate around the world to study. Which gets me to the interesting duality of travelling for work.

Your first interstate or international work trip is a buzz.
Hang on! Someone is actually paying you to travel and meet people? This isn't work at all!
This is living the dream.

In some senses the buzz never really wears off.
I've been in the industry nearly 10 years but every time I'm on the net searching for that next flight or booking the next hotel I'm still a little bit stoked....Anyone who travels for work and tells you that they don't enjoy it is either a masochist or a liar.

The reality of the work trip, though, is like anything. Once is a thrill, twice is a novelty, but after the tenth time it starts to become a bit of a routine.

There are the parts that are awesome: flying to new, or familiar, cities; meeting new people or catching up with old friends; staying in hotels and eating at different restaurants.

Then there are the parts that suck. The alarm going off at 3:45am for the 5th day in a row so you can be at the airport for the 6am flight. Delays. Constant packing and unpacking. Missing a good home cooked meal, your partner or pets. Crap weather. Cancelled meetings.
And most of all, the never-ending work day.

The internet is one of the banes of the modern working traveller.
Yes, you're connected all the time and can check your emails at will but.....well.....you're connected 24 hours a day and can check your email at will.

The reality is that even whilst you are on the road, travelling, going to meetings or doing other business, your friends, family and colleagues will still treat you like you're at home and going to the office. Sure you're in that nice hotel room where the in-house movies are free....but you'll never get to watch them because you've got two working days: Working day A from 9-5 including travelling, meetings, transit and other business; and Working day B from 6-11pm catching up on emails, doing follow up or 'putting out fires'.

A few months ago I was going on a work trip with a colleague. My colleague ran into a mutual friend, they had a chat and at the end the friend said, "Well, have a good holiday"
This can be normal if you travel a lot, people get confused where you are and where you're going. So my colleague explained that it was a week-long work trip where we'd probably be working 14 hour days but we'd still make the most of it.

A few hours later I ran into the same mutual friend, had a chat and at the end also got told "Have a nice holiday".

This is very frustrating for the working traveller because until you've done it yourself it is almost impossible to explain.

"We're going to be working 14 hour days and have three 6am flights this week" somehow gets translated into "Woo hoo, we're off to Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide and are staying in 4-star hotels".

There's no malice in the translation in someone else's mind, just the lack of the experience to really understand the full picture.

And after awhile you do get your routines to make the crap stuff a little easier: pre-booked taxis, flying the night before, decent suitcases that fit in all your stuff, identifying decent hotels and restaurants to give a work trip a little more of that 'home' feel.

And as I say, anyone who doesn't like it shouldn't be doing it because there are plenty of others who would take up the mantle. I love it. Give me that ticket and I'm off.
But don't forget to tell me that it's okay to turn my computer off after 10pm.