1. That being a professional or specialist first and then transferring would have been more useful.
2. That as an international member of staff, you will always be at least one step away from the beneficiaries and probably more like 4+ steps away.
3. That those high school excel lessons were actually really relevant.
4. You will spend most of your time doing boring things.
5. Nobody is as idealistic as you are. But they are as idealistic as you will be in a few years time.
6. Aid workers spend more time at parties than in rural villages.
7. No-one will ever let you actually drive the landrovers and they’re usually broken anyway.
8. Most of your time will be spent gazing into the soulless depths of your laptop.
9. There are a lot of seriously weird people kicking about in emergency responses. The ability to maintain polite conversation in the face of wild absurdity is therefore a very important work/life skill.
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AID LEAP 
All true, absolutely.
There are a lot of seriously weird people people kicking about in the aid sector. Period. And, so…yes – ability to maintain polite conversation in the face of wild absurdity is therefore a very important work/life skill 🙂
If you work for a beltway parasite, you will solely focus on being contractually compliant vs developmentally sound…but only after trying to figure out how to not pay income taxes….
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#9 is a great addition to my usual list.
More time at parties than in rural villages? I wish. Two years in a rural village and a party about every three months was my experience.
So you went into the sector expecting more parties?
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