J. S. Margot - Mazel Tov

I t must have been the beginning of the month. The new academic year hadnt yet begun and I was heading for the canteen, feeling relieved, having just resat the Spanish grammar exam. To get there, I had to walk through the hall of the university building, past benches where dozens of students sat chatting and smoking. The route to the canteen was more exciting than most lectures.

Noticeboards lined the walls, full of intriguing announcements: Who wants to swap my landlord for theirs?, Feel like coming to Barcelona with us? Room for one more person. Conditions apply. Call me and Free sleeping bag for anyone wholl join me in it.

A single corner was reserved for the universitys job agency.

If one of the jobs displayed in a lockable, plastic showcase looked interesting, youd note down the number of the vacancy and go to the little social services office a bit farther along. There a lady with a long-suffering expression would tell you the details, which usually boiled down to her giving you the name, address and telephone number of the employer. Then, sighing under the weight of her boring job, shed wish you good luck with your application.

The agency had provided me with a lot of temporary jobs in the previous two years, from chambermaiding to dishing out detergent samples, from headhunters assistant to museum attendant.

When I came across a handwritten job vacancy: Student (M/F) required to tutor four children (aged between eight and sixteen) every day after school and coach them with their homework, I immediately wrote the number on my palm. An hour later the lady from the job agency gave me the contact details of the family in question. I will call them the Schneiders, which is not their real name, though their name also sounded German, or German-ish.

The Schneiders, the lady said, were Jewish, but that shouldnt be a problem, and if it was a problem, I could always come back and shed try to see if we could work something out, but she couldnt guarantee anything, because you never knew with people like thatwhich she apparently did know, just as she knew that the Schneiders would pay me 60 Belgian francs an hour, which wasnt a lot, but could have been worse. When it came to money, she informed me, Jews were a bit like the Dutch.

When I stared at her in surprise, she seemed taken aback by my ignorance. Why do you think so many Dutch people come here to study interpreting? Because its a good course and its cheap. As soon as theyve got their diploma, they whizz off back to their country. So were basically training our biggest competitors. Luckily the university gets a subsidy for foreign students, so its not all bad. What I want to say is: dont let yourself get pushed around. Dont accept an unpaid trial period. Even if you decide to stop after the first week, they have to pay you for the hours youve worked. I did quick sums in my head as she babbled on, calculating that I could earn 600 Belgian francs a week: 2,500 a month. Back then, when the rent of a small flat was about 6,000 francs a month, it all added up.