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Q. I passed up opportunities like the Peace Corps and teaching English abroad after college so I could focus on my journalism career. I now have several years' experience as a newspaper reporter, and I'm weighing a job at a so-so English-language newspaper in a major foreign city against an offer from a top-100 U.S. metro.

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I'm leaning toward the foreign job because I've always wanted to take a shot at living/working abroad, and I can put up with being broke a little longer to do it.

But it wouldn't be a step up career-wise. The experience would be equivalent to the community newspaper I started at five years ago. However, I would be challenged working in a country where press freedom is relatively new, and the life experience would be great. Potentially, this could lead to a better reporting job abroad.

I could take the job at the metro now and look for a foreign job in a few years. But I worry the longer I wait, the more difficult the decision will become.

I have a couple of questions. First, if you were in my shoes, what would you do? If I take the foreign job and come back to the states in a few years, how would a recruiter/editor view my decision? Would it be a hit against me? Or do I get some credit for taking the plunge?

Thanks,

Shoes

A. Thanks for the offer, but I can't step into your shoes. This decision is all yours -- and I think you're already leaning -- but here are a few more things to think about.

Joe Grimm

For most adults, the older we get, the more encumbered our decisions become. Partner, children and parents -- all of them wonderful -- can limit our options. You will likely never again be as free as you are right now.

In a similar vein, overseas opportunities offered by newspapers are disappearing. The number of foreign postings, already sharply down from a few years ago, is getting smaller.

When comparing newspapers, I often see one as a notch or more above or below the other. But when comparing staffs, I see the people on those staffs as fitting into a range. Usually, the top people at one paper are above the bottom people at a better paper. It is not easy to outplay a newspaper, but with work you can play at the top of its range.

So, standing in your own shoes, what will you do?

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Coming Tuesday: He is eager to get his career started, but is concerned that the lack of a driver's license could leave him by the side of the road.

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