This is the third entry in my write up on going back to teaching English overseas. The first part gave some hard stats and numbers. The second built on these figures and involved a little bit more information relevant to me. This entry, since this is the entry closest to the full moon, is one that will involve as purely an emotional line of reasoning as I can manage. It may sound oxymoronic (har har), but this is coming right from my gut.
Finances figure largely in this decision of mine. The "start up" costs are pretty much negligible - even if I go over after marrying my fiancée and she comes with. Loans would be needed, but these loans would not linger long enough to stress us out given the kind of cash that we could raise working over there. And who doesn't like making lots of money? This guy definitely does!
But what's my gut feeling about the money I'll make overseas?
I feel really good about it. I mean, I'm not going to be able to go away for five years and then come back a millionaire or anything like that, but that's not what I'm after. Writing can be done while teaching - especially university teaching, since it's not necessarily time consuming (10-20 hours a week, often including prep time). And that means that I could actually be making money while also making a name for myself as a writer.
I've been writing lately (welcome to my blog!), but money making has generally taken a hit as a result. Making money and getting my writing out there, among other writers especially (I have very fond memories of the Seoul Writers Workshop and the Seoul Writers' Collective) and among other people would be awesome. But, then. What's to say that I wouldn't be able to get that kind of flexible employment here in Ontario?
This presents a quandary. But. The plentiful nature of ESL positions overseas is what draws me. And where am I going to find a "city of lights" to quote the Deep Purple song in South-Western Ontario? Granted, they were singing about Tokyo, but Seoul (and even Incheon, my old haunt) are just as bright. So there's still that pull of adventure.
And the fact that I could bring my fiancée with me is icing. Delicious, sweet, strangely nutritious icing.
But then I'd also feel a little bad.
I'd feel that I might be pulling her along with me rather than being joined by her. And I have the sense that as much as she says that she wants to try teaching overseas or to just be with me rather than constantly apart as we've been for the last few months and years before that, she'll be doing something that's outside of her comfort zone.
Stepping outside that zone is a good thing, but then her parents aren't young. Though, her mother is so "Old Country" that with one hand she offers amazing coffee and delicious cooking, but with the other hard criticism and an overbearing opinion. So pulling my fiancée away from that is good - Tauruses within families seem to clash more than cooperate - but it's also bad.
I mean, it's her mom after all. She used to email her nearly everyday when she was in university. They're close. And if something happened while we were away I would carry that with me forever. Not to mention her dad - much cooler, but also just as "Old Country." Though, it's unfair to say that old dogs can't be taught new tricks - years into our relationship they finally let us stay in the same room when I'm over there.
So, having my fiancée with me means that we'd be in for super sexy adventures abroad. But it also means that we'd be away from those close to us. Honestly, though, and this is something that I discovered when I was away the first time, were it not for her I'm not sure that I'd have come back in the first place.
Sure, there was graduate school and friends to come back for, but really, were it not for my fiancée, outside of the temporary situation of grad school, I'd probably have had very few reservations about going back overseas afterwards. I'd still visit regularly (those long summers off (two months once you're a fixture) from university teaching would be excellent for long visits) and I'd have the money to actually *do* things with friends while visiting.
So moral dilemmas aside, I think that there's nothing but benefit for going back from a social perspective. I've lived with my fiancée for a year and we're still together - heck, for a large part of that year we shared a two bedroom basement with another couple. Weathering that took much more than I expect a few years in Korea would.
But then what about the other friends we'd be leaving behind? Skype would work well - it did in my first round - and visits would be possible once we both had more vacation time. Really, I feel that this would be a negligible problem. Some of my collaborative work with friends here, on a fortnightly YouTube skit channel (watch for the first skit this weekend!) and on a Doctor Who podcast, TelosAM, might get more complicated because of the dateline and timezone differences, but co-ordinating schedules is always manageable.
Ultimately, I think that the reason why this is still an option that I'm taking so seriously is that I know that it works. When I was teaching in Korea last I did suffer a little bit of well, not burnout, but I began to feel undervalued by the end.
It was all well and good being a celebrity and probably featuring in one of my young co-teacher's fantasies (she blushingly asked if she could put her arm through the crook of mine when we all posed for a picture on my third to last day), but I was also dogged by the feeling that my students really weren't learning. Maybe that's an argument for not going back - I might just wind up adding to the pile of complaints that some Koreans have about the ineffectuality of foreign teachers.
But this feeling is more likely because of a change to my job description after my first few weeks. What I did in those early days seemed to bore students more than enthuse them. I was totally new to the teaching game then and that my revamped job description dictated that I should make my classes fun rather than purely educational was a welcome break.
But my new m.o. was exactly why I felt as I did near the end of my contract. I wanted to teach my students. I wanted to give them the skills and knowledge necessary to really get English as best as they could. But I had to marry entertainment to education. And my personality made that a little bit difficult to execute.
Nonetheless, going back offers adventure, money, and a chance to actually be self-sufficient. All through my undergraduate years it was almost a bi-monthly occurrence to email my parents and ask them to kick a few bucks my way. But that never happened in Korea. Yes, the three hundred I took as "start up" money quickly ran out and I had to take a small loan from my recruiter to last until the banks opened after my first weekend, but I never had to ask anyone for money after that.
As a student of English who once considered a career in academia, parents and advisors warned me about the dangers of working and making money. And I succumbed to those dangers.
I also know that working overseas is a great way to make lasting friendships. Graduate school certainly was, too. But working in Korea didn't cost me nearly as much. Yet, both have a certain air about them that forges friendships that I can best describe by comparing them to the kind of friendships made amongst soldiers in combat, though I've never been in that line of work.
Honestly, even if I were to stick around Ontario and move to a major city my feeling is that my current friendships would remain and others would spring up anyway. Why not let the others be with people from all the many corners of the world rather than just a few or a couple?
In the end, what I fear the most about going back is that I can't say for sure what my fiancée and I will be getting into. It's one thing if I went over alone and wound up at a crappy school. But I know that potentially bringing my fiancée into the same situation would make me feel directly responsible. I'm sure that she wants to go for her own reasons as well as those involving me, but it does seem to be solely my idea, and so I would feel terrible should anything go wrong for the both of us. If we kept to the public school system, though, that probably wouldn't be a problem. Public schools and big international recruiters (EPIK, GEPIK, JET) tend to be much more legit than many ma and pa out-of-house recruiting agencies.
If you've got any questions or comments about teaching ESL overseas leave them in the comments. And stay-tuned for the last part of this series, coming in next week!
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