No foreign country has felt more foreign to me than has southern California. The university feels a little less strange than the rest of Orange County, but I still feel as if I'm learning a foreign language.
"I'll need to ask the MSO about this," said one staff member.
"Sure," I replied, "What's an MSO?" She stared at me as if I were an alien from another planet. It was as if I had said, "What's a cow?" Everyone was supposed to know this.
"What does it stand for?" I asked. Another blank stare. This stare meant something different. It meant that she had no idea. (It's hard to find anyone at UCI who knows what MSO stands for.)
"Everyone knows what an MSO is. It's what [the name of another staff member] is," she retorted.
I apologized for not knowing the term. I told her that I had been a professor for 20 years at a different large state university, but had never heard that expression.
I eventually figured out that MSO is the title that the University of California bestows upon department managers. Spoiler Alert: It stands for "Management Services Officer". When I finally learned the lingo, the title changed to CAO, for "Chief Administrative Officer".
When I had a financial question, I was told to "see your analyst". The first time I heard that, it sounded rather rude. If a New Yorker said it, I'd think they were telling me to see a psychiatrist. At UCI, the people who deal with the finances are called analysts. The Faculty Senate committees also have analysts, but they're something like Administrative Assistants.
More obscure is when we refer to someone as an "LPSOE". When the confused listener asks "What's that?" we reply, "Lecturer with Potential Security of Employment". They feel slightly more enlightened, but not much.
A staff member sent an email message to the department soon after I got here "reminding" us of something. I went to the office and pointed out that there must be a mailing list I'm not on but I'm supposed to be on, since I hadn't gotten any earlier messages about the thing we were reminded of. The staff member said, "No, you're on all the right mailing lists. This was the first message about it."
I've since learned that at UCI "reminder" often means "this is something I'm telling you for the first time." Someone conjectured that it really means "this is something I should have told you sooner!"
Every so often, when someone gets annoyed with me for not knowing something unique to UCI or the University of California that they tell me everyone knows, I apologize for my ignorance and ask, "How should I have learned this sooner?" They stop and think about it, and finally admit, "I guess there's no way you would have known this."
If you recognize the title of this piece as a pun on "You See, I Speak", you're on your way to becoming fluent in UCI-Speak.