Here I'll explain what my job is. After living in Williamstown, Massachusetts for four years, and Coeur d'Alene (a metropolis in comparison) for years before that, I'm ready to live in a new place. I want to live in a city, and my priorities in my first post-grad year are traveling and enjoying the last bit of my waning youth. So I decided I wanted to teach English in Korea. The southern one. Why Korea, you might ask?
Initially I wanted to go to Japan. But I learned from research that teaching English there is not what it used to be. It has been a popular destination for the ESL world for years and is now completely oversaturated with English teachers. It's basically impossible to make a living there if you don't have a lot of prior experience (it's also the most expensive country in the world) and I'd probably have to commute to two different schools.
The next idea was China. And I could learn Chinese there in my spare time, which is supposedly what everyone is supposed to do. But the ESL industry there looked pretty sketchy, not to mention living in a third-world country with a billion people and the worst pollution in the world wasn't exactly what I wanted. Now don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with living in third world countries. Living with a host family for three weeks in Nicaragua was one of my favorite experiences. But lounging on the beaches of San Juan del Sur sounds much more enjoyable than navigating my way through Beijing and being unable to see 10 feet in front of me because of the smog. Living in a big city, such as Buenos Aires, is crazy enough, but living in a Chinese big city just sounds like too much.
Then it was Thailand. The pictures make it look like paradise, and apparently it has some of the best beaches and surfing in the world. But the ESL industry over there is even worse, and the students apparently have absolutely no motivation nor the ability to behave in a classroom setting.
Then I looked into Korea and Taiwan, and they definitely seemed like the best bet. They have the most reputable ESL industries, where almost every kid there goes to an afterschool program to learn English. They also use the most advanced teaching methods that focus on conversational English as opposed to grammar-based instruction taught as a content course. So the teaching would be enjoyable. The salary was good, and since there was such a high demand for teachers, you could get any type of job wherever you wanted. Taiwan seemed too small so I chose Korea.
Of course then there was this recession. A few years ago, there were 10 jobs for every teacher. You could get a job there in two days if you wanted to. They were begging people to come. Now, they're cutting back on hiring, all of the teachers already there are extending their contracts since there's no work in their home countries, and just about every recent college grad has decided they want to teach English in Korea. So, the job search wasn't going well. I found a job that would've been great, but since I didn't have all my documents ready in time, they gave it to someone else.
Most of the other offers I got were in the middle of nowhere or wanted me to leave the next day, before I had everything ready (note: if you're going through this process, make sure you get all of your documents ready beforehand). I really wanted to be in Busan, which definitely seems like the best city in Korea: big and cosmopolitan enough that there's plenty to do and I wouldn't get homesick or culture shock, but not crazy like Seoul or too westernized. I'd have beaches to go to as well as mild weather year round (in the rest of the country, the winters are harsh, something I'm really sick of, and the summers are very hot and humid, something I can't deal with).
And then this job came up. The recruiter (they're the ones who put you with the schools) saw that I went to Williams, so he thought I'd be qualified to teach at an AP test prep hagwon (these kids are so good that instead of going to after school English classes, they go to after school AP classes). I had an interview, impressed my boss enough in the quiz section I guess, and so I got the job. I'll be teaching AP US government, comparative politics, and probably European and American history as well. I'll also be teaching SAT prep classes as well as some grammar and reading and writing classes. They pay for housing and the hourly is good, so it'll be a good way to save money. But, I'll be working 6-7 days a week, usually around 60 teaching hours. And there's going to be lots of prep time. So you do the math...
So there won't be the weekend trips I was planning and I won't get to hang out with all the other people my age, who'll be going out on weekends (this is when I have lots of hours, the students aren't in school on the weekends so that's when most of their classes are). There won't really even be free time to explore Seoul. But I guess I can suck it up for a year. Or maybe less. I teach my classes based on student demand. So if my classes are good, lots of kids sign up and I get lots of hours. If not, I don't get hours, and I get fired quickly. So we'll see how it goes. Now on to Seattle!
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