The Next Steps

You know, when I was getting ready to study abroad in the Czech Republic, the visa process stressed me out. It took months and a total of maybe 30 pages of different paper work and documents to apply for one. The Korean E-2 visa application was 3 pages long. I had to turn in 5 documents. It took five business days to get. I could do a little jig for how easy it was to get, especially with my future employer being a government run office.

The Contract and the Notice of Appointment were pretty straight forward, as far as alternating Korean and translated English contracts go. So much so, I kind of wonder if many of the people who taught for EPIK and complained about it so much on various forums and blogs actually read their contract.  Many of the complaints out there are about unmet teaching expectations, such as the co-teacher not helping them at all, or the co-teacher taking over the whole lesson. It says, in the actual contract, that there will be a lot of different teaching environments and then lists them! It actually says that your requirements can range from individually functioning teacher to assistant co-teacher.

Of course,  maybe these are updated contracts, and it was not so explicitly stated in older contracts. Or also, maybe, there were some people who got bored reading the contract by page 2 and skimmed read the rest, who knows.

But reading all of those forums and blogs of people who have gone on this journey  before me has been a comfort and a source of anxiety for me. There are a number of people who had a very bad time teaching English in Korea, and some of them are easy to write off as people who cannot wrap their minds around the idea that not everywhere functions the same as their home country. Reading a negative blog post about someone having a bad time doing what I am about to be doing *knock on wood* causes me to be very critical of them. I go over what they write with a scornful attitude, scoffing at their stories as getting upset over little things. I jump to the conclusion that their dissatisfaction with the people around them is because of them being unadaptable,  rather than any real problem with the people around them.

Whenever there is a blog post venting and ranting about the work environment in Korea being unorganized and taking advantage of the blogger, I think that the blogger clearly didn’t do any research into Korean work culture or expectations. Or worse, they went there expecting an easy job and instead had to work, and are just complaining about it.

However, I think these critical, sometimes mean spirited, thoughts are really more about me being preemptively defensive of my own hopes, and trying to cut down on my own fears. I don’t want to hate working in Korea. I don’t want the cultural dissonance to be so wide that I can’t bridge the gap at all. I worry that I will leave the experience sounding petty, or being more closed off to other cultures than before. I worry, most simply, that I will have a bad time and that it will be my fault. It is easy to write of all these people as narrow minded and ignorant, but don’t we all complain sometimes? I’m sure that many of these people went in the open hearts and minds, and found they just didn’t like it. That is something that can happen to me too, just as easily.

I suppose it is a silly thing to worry about in advance like this but I like to think these things through. And not to make it sound like everybody, or even a sizable minority, out there are saying they had a bad time in Korea. I guess the negative comments just stick in the brain. In a way, it feels like I am mentally preparing to go into battle. I am arming myself with knowledge of complaints, so that if I come across them, and feel them myself, I can knock them down. Not to be overly dramatic about it.

 

Getting Into EPIK

There are a lot of different blogs that talk about the different parts of getting into EPIK, so I thought that I would add my two cents only about a few things.

1. In some older blogs, they didn’t have to have TEFL certificates or a lesson plan included in the application. Now you need both. If you don’t have a degree that is relevant to the job of teaching English (see epik.go.kr for more information) you have to have at least a 100 hour TEFL/TESOL certificate. You can get them online, but don’t. It won’t help you be prepared to be a teacher, and ultimately that is what you are going to spend most of your time doing, so you might as well do it well. For Busan you have to have 50 hours of in class TEFL anyway, so if you can, do try and invest in a good, in person, TEFL/TESOL course.

 

(credit to: http://adultesljobs.com/tesol-tefl-acronyms/)

2. The lesson plan is a newer element to the application. Don’t worry, there is a lot of websites (waygook.org for one) that can help you out with the lesson plan. Just don’t copy and paste a lesson plan into your application. That will not get you an interview and it is also ethically wrong. I would frown at you from across the internet.

 

(Credit to: http://chiasuanchong.com/tag/lesson-plans/)

3. For the personal essay and interview, I have a theory about why some people pass into the interview phase or pass the interview. There are people who are much more qualified than me who did not pass, and though I was unable to ask them directly, from some clues I think I might know what hurt a lot of their chances. They made everything about their traveling. Talking about appreciating different cultures is great, but that isn’t the point of the job. You are going there to teach, so talk about that.

4. Be patient. There is a lot of hurry up and waiting in the EPIK process, so stay on top of things, but allow for the long periods of no news. I think the actual job is going to be like that too, so take it as a practice run for the different organizational methods of the Korean education system.

That all being said, I have been placed, but I still need to get my Notice of Appointment, Contract, and E2 Visa, so I still have a lot left to do. I think maybe I will make the next post about those three things, but who knows.