::A Geek in Korea::

The intensive classes in winter usually throw the school into disorder for a few days the first week they start. Students are coming at the wrong times, schedules have mistakes, or the wrong books get ordered for a class. This is fine over the course of a week, but having it all happened to me, today, was highly aggravating.

My bad day started when I had to go to work early to find a book for a special class I knew next to nothing about. The brother of one of my other special one on one classes wanted to start a class with me once a week. No problem, except that he’s a very low level student that needed a new book. Since it’s my class, I pick the book. I went to the book store before my morning class, picked out what I needed for the class, then headed to work. I get to the school and hand over the reciept for the book and tell them I had a hard time picking out a book for the class.

“Class? What class? That class was canceled as of last night. Didn’t you get the internal office email about that?”

Since I don’t live in the office, I don’t have access to internal email when I’m at home. The secretary claimed they didn’t have my phone number, but that’s a lie considering I called them from the book store two days ago looking for a book for this same class. They didn’t tell me it was canceled then either. If that was the worst part of the day, it would have been only slightly annoying. I had a long three hour lunch break, but I could use that to get some papers graded, go to a restuarant for lunch, and play some video games while I waited. No big deal.

The first class I taught is a combination of two classes at the same level taught by two different teachers. One was my old class, one was my coworker’s. The first book we taught for the class happened to sync up perfectly. All 14 of the students were on the same page of the book coming into class, so merging them seemed like a small miracle. Then I got to teaching the second set of books today.

This entire series of books has been a complete disaster and a total headache. I want to throw them out the window, but all the parents insist we finish them no matter how many typographical errors and stupid exercises they contain. These books are split up into three different parts, and the foreigners are responsible for should have been completed last month. I find out that my students had finished one of the books, while the other students have nearly all of both books incomplete. I decided that I’d try to finish as much new material as possible, then try to complete the review material if there was time. Turns out that I had my students finish one of the units for homework so they’d still be reviewing no matter what I did today.

Total disaster. I made the best of it, but it wasn’t a good class.

The students think I’m an absent minded moron, but it’s because I’m having all sorts of problems just making sure that my students have books to teach in the first place in all my other classes, trying to keep track of all the changes, and factor in all the other stuff like rogue coworkers doing my materials when they burn through theirs too quickly and messing up my syllabus without even telling me.

I’m still not warming to my new coworkers either. One woman talks on a telephone by shouting loudly. She talks for HOURS on the phone when I’m in the office. I left to go to lunch, returned, and she was still talking to the same mother. When she isn’t on the phone, the other coworker watched Korean dramas on the Internet. This is extremely rude, since she doesn’t have the courtesy to put on headphones. I watch videos and news on my PMP constantly, but I’m in my own world. I’m not blasting the speakers on the computer.

I’ve started leaving for lunch and working in coffeeshops because I can’t stand being with these noisy people. I also have no one to speak English to. They converse exclusively in Korean about boring Korean things like the beauty of different models. I’d rather spend 4,000 on some sweetened coffee and not have to deal with those topics of conversations. I miss having a foreign coworker to bounce ideas off of, or to blow off some stress with a complaint.

My wife is worried that all this is getting me too high strung. I really hate when the incompentcy of others impacts my job and makes me work harder. This happened CONSTANTLY today. I needed to go to a Xbox room to shoot some zombies and blow off some stress to get through the day. I’m not happy about this turn of events at all.  I’m lucky that the students I taught today are my best, throught the week, and I had a relative easy time in class. If I was teaching my worst set of classes, I might have put in my resignation today. I’m pretty close to handing in my resignation, but I’m trying to hang on to see what the new system will be like before I make it official. The only thing that stresses me out more than a bad day at work is looking for a new job and dealing with shady new people, so I’m kind of stuck at the moment. One more month and I’ll know for sure where I’ll end up this year.