Immigrant Email

June 3, 2008 - 10:02 AM by Jessica

I’m having an email address crisis. The pressure’s on to get me to switch to a Gmail account and I’m loath to do so. Here’s the thing: I’ve been in Israel for just about 14 years, not an insignificant amount of time, and sometimes I think that the most Israeli thing about me is my email address, jessica[at]netvision.net.il (Please note: This is not an invitation to send me unsolicited email). It signifies that I was the very first Jessica to have an email address with Netvision — one of Israel’s very first ISPs in the mid 1990s, and still one of the largest – and that it’s not Jessica1 or JessicaS. Just Jessica. Granted, being jessica@netvision leaves me wide open to lots of spam, but I’m loath to give it up, because I can assure you that I’ll never be jessica@gmail.com. Immigration, the way it used to be.

But my email address signifies more than just a certain uniqueness. It confers upon me a pioneering status in a place where pioneers are highly valued, whether they’ve made the desert bloom or turned their plowshares into semiconductors. Now, I’m neither a farmer nor a techie entrepreneur. In fact, I know that in this country in which I live, I will always be an immigrant of sorts, with forever newbie status because of my New York accent and American characteristics. Yet my email address lets me be entrepreneur of a certain kind, one of the first Netvision users, letting people know that I was here when people were starting to get email addresses and I was one of the first on that particular boat. It’s like venture capitalist Jon Medved said while I was interviewing him the other day about a story on immigrants: “Immigrants make great entrepreneurs because being an immigrant is being the CEO of your life. It’s a hugely risk-accepting act to become an immigrant, like developing your own start-up.”

Okay, so being jessica@netvision isn’t exactly my own startup, but it’s my pioneering effort, my way of saying, I’ve been here a while, and I can prove it.

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Comments

2 Comments on Immigrant Email

Darnell Clayton on Tue, Jun 3rd 2008 11:53 PM

There is an easy solution to this. Why not have your jessica@netvision forward to your Gmail account (which is the best email account with no close second) and then have your Gmail account send emails under the jessica@netvision address (a free feature Google gives to users).

Basically you would be reading all of your email via Gmail, but sending out under Jessica@netvision . Sounds like a workable solution to me.

Note: I would post a link with more info, but I am not sure how aggressive you comment filters are here, so feel free to email for more info).

Jessica on Fri, Jun 13th 2008 3:43 PM