Should I stay or should I go?

November 12, 2014 6:29 AM

I've been teaching English in Korea for 2 years now, I don't know where to go from here and I'm looking for some input from people who are not my family or friends. I'm a law grad who now only has 2 years of ESL teaching to my name and I'm really unsure about where I should go from here.

I graduated from a 5 year undergraduate degree in law and sociology in 2012 and immediately came to Korea to work as an English teacher after I graduated. I'm 25 now. I'm from New Zealand so undergrad law degrees are a thing. I convinced myself in my first year that it would be my only year for the good of my future career prospects. I convinced myself the same thing again this year. My current contract has come up for renewal and I'm feeling like I wanna stay longer but I'm not sure if that is a really stupid decision.

I enjoy living here well enough and I enjoy working with kids. In the job I'm in now I get treated more like a real teacher - I teach alone, I plan all of my own lessons, I teach the same kids every day. The cost of living is low relative to what I get paid so I can save a reasonable amount of money if I want to. I feel like I'd like to stay a while longer, but I get the feeling this is out of a sense of comfort and laziness as much as anything else.

I don’t know what I want to do for a job but I have a fairly laid back personality so I can do pretty much anything as long as my coworkers are tolerable to be around every day. I come from a relatively working class background so I have no real conception of what my job prospects are at home or any connections that can get me a foot in the door somewhere as a starting point. I’ve enjoyed living abroad but I’ve been bad with money and spent it all on travelling during my vacations and going shopping all the time.

I like teaching but I don’t find it very intellectually stimulating. I'm worried I'm drawn to teaching as a long term career because the career path is so clear. I'd just need to study for 12 months more and then I could pretty much walk into a job. I think I’d enjoy teaching long term but at the same time I feel like I’d be settling and not really challenging myself.

I wouldn’t mind trying my hand at something related to my original degree but I know the job market at home is fairly crappy and I’m not sure what other options I’d have available to me.

I’m faced with the options of:

- Going home to unemployment for an uncertain period of time, with very little in the way of savings and no idea as to where I should be looking for jobs and how much of a hindrance my 2 year stint as an English teacher will be when it comes to applying for jobs. I’m way behind on the compulsory payments on my student loan so if I went home now I wouldn’t be able to enrol in any teacher training until I caught up on payments, which would take longer than a year unless I immediately found a good job.

- Staying here for another year, using my decent salary and low cost of living to save money to get out of default on my loan, and applying for some further study in 2016 towards being a qualified elementary school teacher back home.

The first option makes me feel like I'd be abandoning the option of being a teacher for the next couple of years at least, and the second option makes me feel like I'd be restricting myself too much. Would 3 years of ESL experience look really bad to prospective employers?

I feel so unsure about either option and all of my friends and family just give me answers that are biased towards where they want me to be living. I’m terrified about leaving stable employment and a regular paycheque for an indefinite stint of unemployment back home.

I guess I just want a little outside input on what you think I should do. Be brutally honest, I don't mind. As an employer do you think that teaching ESL abroad for 3 years rather than 2 years would make a significant difference? Do you think I've hurt my future job prospects by staying at this job for as long as I have? What kinds of jobs do you recommend I take a look at considering my background education and prior experience (if I do go home now and forget about becoming a qualified teacher for the time being)? People who did a similar thing to me and came out the other end with a good job please share your experiences too.

posted by kwes to Work & Money (11 answers total)

I taught ESL for three years abroad and have been hired to many lucrative ESL jobs in the U.S. as a result. I haven't bothered to get licensed here though.

If you want to stay, then stay--sounds like you like your job and where you live. That's something not everyone has going for them!
posted by chaiminda at 6:33 AM on November 12, 2014

I taught ESL in China for awhile and I completely understand about the job being comfortable but not intellectually stimulating. I eventually learned Chinese, went to grad school, and started working in international education jobs so I wound up staying in China for 9 years. But I don't think I would have been able to teach ESL for all those years, and it sounds like you are ready for a change too.

Maybe you could stay for a fixed amount of longer time there, while doing or learning something new in Korea, and at the same time working on some plans for your next step. I'll throw out that I have an American friend who got a PhD in International Relations from a Korean university (a program in English, I think). She now lives in Korea full-time, though I am not sure exactly what she does currently (just throwing that out there as another option).

So, I guess my advice would be to stay a bit longer while you have the comfy job but set an end date, all the while figuring out your next step. If, after setting an end date, you discover you want to stay longer, that's fine. But I think planning and having a goal helps a lot with indecision and intertia.

Good luck!
posted by bearette at 6:50 AM on November 12, 2014

You should stay, live frugally and pay down your student loan debt. If you enjoy what you do, enjoy where you live, you're fine.

So many graduates are working in retail and service jobs, so you're lucky! All jobs lose their challenge after awhile, so don't get caught up in some idea that you have to be the CEO of something if it's not in your interests or in your nature.

For sure, if you like teaching, it can be a great profession! So stay where you are, get into a position where you can enroll in school when you return home and become a teacher.

FWIW, in some places in the US, those years of teaching, even ESL, count towards experience and you're compensated for them on the introductory pay scale.

I will say, don't let some goofy part of your brain tell the happy part of your brain that being comfortable, happy and contented in your work is somehow wrong. If you are happy with the money you make, are living within your means and don't loathe your work, then you are 100% doing the right thing.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 6:55 AM on November 12, 2014 [6 favorites]

I can't imagine that three years of ESL teaching experience is going to look any worse to a prospective employer than two years of ESL teaching experience plus an uncertain period of unemployment.

Look, one year is actually a very short period of time. Given that you're not sure what you want to do, I think it's very reasonable to stay in Korea for another year. You can save money and get out of default on your loans, which is a good thing in and of itself. You can spend some time thinking about what you really want to do - I can't tell from this post whether you really want to be a teacher or if you feel like "eh, I've already put in 2 years, I guess I'm committed." I am 36 and am on my third career (not job - I was a biologist for three years after university, then I got a masters degree and became a librarian, and now I'm a software developer).

Also: challenging yourself isn't everything. It's perfectly OK to have a job that you can do and enjoy well enough.
posted by mskyle at 7:08 AM on November 12, 2014 [1 favorite]

Did not teach ESL overseas, but I did work overseas for a few years as a Peace Corps volunteer and at a later point, did a one year stint teaching in a high school. I would have said exactly what you state here in regards to both jobs:... I don’t find it very intellectually stimulating. ...

I don't know how important that is to you for job happiness, especially since you are not elaborating at what else you want out of a job, but if you feel that pull, I don't think that you will be happy teaching at that level. In my experience, teaching at the university level was intellectually challenging/stimulating, but I don't know what that would require in the New Zealand educational system. For myself, I put that factor on a list of things that I want out of a job ..you might want to consider making a list of a few things that you want/need out of a job, a few deal breakers, and then move forward and keep that list in mind as you explore/think about careers.

Based on what you state, I think you can easily work another year and why not if it reduces the stress. During that time, you can email people who have job positions that you think that you might want and find out exactly what they did they did to get there, how they positioned their resumes,etc. Then when you narrow down future career and how to get the job that you get, hit the ground running when you go back to New Zealand. But plan for the next year to be the year of saving $/enjoying things/planning for step 2, whatever that might be.

Also, there are many ways to position staying for 3 years taht will sound favorable to employers (ie, I was committed and stay AT LEAST X years on new jobs, I am now committed to [making widgets or whatever new job/career does], etc.).
posted by Wolfster at 7:26 AM on November 12, 2014

When I was about to be hired to start my last full time job, my future boss said to me something to the effect of:

It takes 3 years to really give a job a shot and to demonstrate your abilities. The first year is spent figuring it all out. The second year is spent doing it and the third is when you prove that that second year wasn't a fluke.

I stayed three years.

(And if asked in some future interview, it makes a great reason to have spent 3 years doing a particular job!)
posted by infini at 7:58 AM on November 12, 2014 [3 favorites]

I taught ESL in Korea for four years and it never hurt me. If you like the country but not the job, why not consider moving into another field there? Friends of mine became translators, textbook writers, paralegals for international law firms, and one opened a bar. Some of those jobs require strong Korean skills but loads don't, and learning a foreign language will make you a better teacher and impress employeers back home anyway.
posted by peppermind at 8:15 AM on November 12, 2014

I think you can't go wrong by staying. You're not just teaching English. Look at it this way. You've got two years--and possibly more if you renew--of immersion in a foreign, first-world culture in a G-20 nation (i.e., one of the largest economies in the world). You're meeting people and, to a greater or lesser extent, "networking" or making friends there. You're from a country in the same economic and trading region as this country. In fact, Korea is NZ's fifth-largest trading partner.

In short, whether you go back to NZ to work or stay and try to work at one of the many international companies' Korean offices (or in an industry that services these Korean offices, such as law firms, accountants, etc.), you're well-positioned to have something to offer and a concrete good gained by two or more years of work in Korea: cultural and, hopefully, linguistic proficiency and the rudiments of a network.
posted by resurrexit at 8:46 AM on November 12, 2014 [2 favorites]

I taught English in Japan for 2.5 years and your experience is quite similar to both my own and a lot of my colleagues.

The one thing I will say is that if the job/Korea isn't killing you then you have a great opportunity to pay down/off your debt. As you said, going back to NZ is a bit of a crapshoot for jobs right now, so you may end up losing a year if you return anyway. You also have a great opportunity to really learn Korean, which is a benefit. If you can tell a prospective employer/program that you were able to move to a totally different country, gain teaching skills, pay off your debts and learn a new language in 3 years then it should compare favourably to what other people had done.

If you do want to go to teacher's college/training, or some other further education back in NZ, would you be able to apply for it from Korea? That is what I did when I decided it was time to leave Japan (but for law school). It was a bit more of a hassle then being back in Canada, but not that much. It kind of front-loaded the uncertainty because if I didn't get in then would I stay in Japan or go back to Canada anyway? But I did get in so it worked out pretty well. I was also able to tell my employer around contract renewal time that I wouldn't be staying the full year and planned to leave in July. They could have decided to not renew my contract (which would have sucked), but they kept me on and gave me a schedule that would minimize disruption when I had to leave.

I don't know if the teaching job itself helped in getting a job after graduating from law school, but the fact that I was able to learn some Japanese while there did. If I were in a field with a more obvious connection to teaching then I think the job itself would have had a greater impact.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 9:45 AM on November 12, 2014 [1 favorite]

Is there a public service intake in New Zealand? You might be able to get lined up for a job there.

Is it worth looking at jobs in Australia?

The job market isn't bad in Australia. You could apply and see what sort of things come up. You might like Australian cities.

Do you have the ability to work in the UK? Maybe there as well.

Having lived overseas seems to be a bonus to a lot of employers. Having another language is also useful.

Any Australian company that dealt with Korean companies would presumably appreciate your skills.
posted by sien at 5:23 PM on November 12, 2014

When I did contract jobs abroad, at first I treated the time overseas as an extended vacation from "the real world," thinking only about the day-to-day experience in-country so that I could "get the most out of" the experience. It was fun while it lasted, but it actually made it really tough for me to transition back home when each contract ended. It became easier to transition back and forth when I treated being abroad as "the real world," too.

In your shoes, I would go ahead and decide to stay one more year. But I would commit to myself that this year will be different on an ongoing basis, not just tell myself that it will be the last year and face this same dilemma again all at once at the end of next year. Maybe set a budget for getting out of default, and make monthly payments. Maybe make a list of tasks that would help you decide between law and teaching and spend a certain number of hours each month working through those tasks. Some examples: researching legal employers, researching teacher training programs, online networking (listservs, LinkedIn, Twitter)with relevant professional groups for either law or teaching or both, trying out an intellectually stimulating hobby to see if it might make up for teaching's being less intellectually stimulating, informational interviews at international schools or multinational law firms in Korea. Making the decision yourself little by little, and opening up your options by paying back those loans, will make the transition easier when the time comes.
posted by Bentobox Humperdinck at 6:54 PM on November 12, 2014 [2 favorites]