Thoughts on Working in Korea

Dear Mr. Kim,

Let me set down my thoughts and plans on working in Korea so you can have a fuller picture of my feelings towards working here.

Things I like about working at JAFLI and living in Korea.

• Work here is going well. Conditions are better than I anticipated, my teaching appears to be successful, and the people I'm working with are nice. I am very happy to hear that my students are enjoying their classes and that they feel I'm a good teacher. It is important for me to know that my students feel they are getting their money's worth in my classes.
• I enjoy the respect I'm getting as a teacher in Korea.
• I'm enjoying learning about Korean culture, history and language.
• I like saving $12,000 this year.

The difference between working at JAFLI this year and next year.

• My goal for next year is to increase my annual savings from $12,000 to $20,000, and simultaneously make improvements to my lifestyle. I'm currently living like a US college student, and next year I'd like to live like a US young professional. This means better furniture (more tables and shelves), a better kitchen, better audio and computer equipment, more space for all of this, and a wider circle of activities.
• For this to happen I will need to make $30 an hour rather than $17, and the teaching time should average about 130 hours a month.
• The courses I teach should use English as a tool, but the subject should be technical or business-related, or, if I continue to teach English classes, there should be non-teaching projects I'm involved in that call upon my other skills.

The wider circle of activities may the hardest goal to achieve. I don't miss having a wider circle of activities this year because I have set a goal of saving $12,000 this year, and the more classes I teach, the easier that goal is to attain. But next year I want to be doing more on weekdays than English teaching and sleeping. I want to be pursuing other activities are creative and profitable.

Creative and profitable activities, such as business projects, require a lot more coordination with other people than teaching English does. I need good communications capabilities. For instance, I need to be able to find new things by making phone calls, and I need to be able to express novel ideas in ways that my associates can understand quickly. This is why my mastery of Hangul is an important indicator of whether I should stay in Korea or not.

If I'm making good progress in mastering Hangul, then I'm building the communications foundation for doing business and creative projects in Korea, and it's worthwhile for me to stay longer and continue teaching. Next year the novelties of living in Korea and teaching English will wear off. If I'm not mastering Hangul, then it will be hard for me to find interesting and valuable things to do in Korea. I enjoy teaching, but by next year I should be creating more value for your efforts, and my own, than I have this year as a first-year English teacher.