New Horizons
Yes! I started working for a new company on March 9th.
I am now happily employed by IDEAL EDU, teaching English to Koreans. I left my job in Convergys in Febuary. Why did I leave my job in Convergys you may ask. Well, there were many reasons, the primary factor being I don’t think I’m really good at selling services. My job as inbound sales rep in Convergys was very stressful emotionally: I had difficulty pushing for sales so my stats were correspondingly low. Despite that, Convergys was willing to regularize me after the end of my probabtionary period, but I declined. I had been nursing a desire to teach English for a long time. I took a gamble and decided to resign so that I could pursue my new ‘dream’. To be honest, teaching English is hardly my deepest passion, but it’s fun and fulfilling. There is also the added incentive of being less stressful (not having to push for sales from irate customers) and besides I am better at teaching English. It fits my abilities better, to put it in another way. On the downside, the pay is much lower, but I am determined to adjust.
TRAINING: When I first entered IDEAL I was not particularly impressed by the facilities and decor. The lounge at the entrance is pretty fancy, but once you enter the main work area the aesthetics take a major downturn and you’ll be confronted by many derelict stations. Each is equipped with a computer. The place is poorly air conditioned and the carpet is peeling in many places. After the fanciness of Convergys, my new work environment was a major change for my luxury- hungry soul.
Oh yeah and the pay seriously sucks.
I haven’t made any real friends yet. The people are nice enough, but they seem pretty banal. Nobody seems interesting enough to get to know..oh except for this one guy named Nix. He’s really fuuny and nice, but he scares me a little. Mainly because he’s gay!
Oh yeah and my buddy was rather mean and difficult to get along with. You see, after you finish the training period, you are assigned a buddy. My buddy had a serious attitude problem. She was so moody half the time I had difficulty getting along with her.
I mean, I have scars of my own. For those of you too obtuse to know, the last couple of years have hardly been rosy. I’ve been through a lot of painful experiences. In short, it does not take a lot to open up my wounds. I’m like a volanoe ready to erupt if you apply the right amount of pressure. Add a little salt and my wounds will smart.
Enough about her…
Well, I’m enjoying my job. I guess that’s what’s most important right? So I just ignore the people all around me with their mindless emotional problems and neurotic disorders and I should be fine.
MY STUDENTS:
Ah, hear comes the juicy part. I like my students. Well, most of them anyway. Koreans are very timid on the phone, not like bold, sarcastic Americans. Most probably because they’re too self- conscious to really rant their feelings. Whatever. It’s the nature of the job, if you really analyse it. Teaching English does not raise the same flags customer service will do in a call center.
Anyway, let me describe in brief detail some of my favorite students.
A) Ju Hyun: she’s a really smart and funny Korean woman who works in HR. I liked her immediately from the first day I thaught her. She’s really polite and very friendly, which comes across even over the phone. I tell her personal stuff I will not tell any of my other students (I try and forget the calls are recorded). She laughs a lot and shares a lot of interesting stuff about her life: like how she hates her manager, how much she loves drinking etc; I can’t stand her ringtone though: it’s a duet from the movie ‘Music and Lyrics’ with Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore.
B) Jae Hyun: He’s a really sweet fifteen year old boy. His voice always sounds hoarse, a permanent frog in the throat. He’s very quiet and will sometimes take an eternity to answer a simple question unless you help him. I like him a lot though. I feel compassion for him. (I’m starting to regard my students as my children). Like a father with a painfully shy son I emphatise with this kid.
C) Seong Ryeol and Ho Yeol: They are very bright middle school teenage boys. They laugh a lot and can speak very good English. In truth they speak much better English than their fathers (who work in Shinhan bank- Korea’s supposed second largest bank). I tutor their dads in the morning. I had a hard time trying to define the word ‘medicine’ to a forty year old bank manager. People who were listening to my call during that class could not stop laughing. Anyway, Seong Ryeol is always complaining to me about all the homework he is given everyday (about three tons) and Ho Yeol’s dad cut off the wires to the family televison because ‘he wanted his son to study more’. Koreans are OBSSESSED with education. The spoonfeeding, book learning kind. It’s like their national religion or something. As if the Asian economic crisis did not teach them the limits of education. I read once in TIME magazine that east Asia with their absolute quasi-religious faith in the power of education were really thrown off the boat after the asian economic crisis: for the first time, it became painfully apparent that having a degree from some fruity prestigious university did not gurantee a good job. Korean education (east asia in general), with it’s obssession with rote memory learning and the stifling of creativity, tends to create robots incapable of lateral thinking. I mean, I understand the importance of education, but studying for six hours a day after school is not going to gurantee anyone a bright future. Did Bill Gates and Beyonce Knowles graduate from Harvard after spending years preparing for some pointlessly difficult entrance exam? East asian education will prepare for a cubicle in an office, but not for a pioneering career that requires freedom to be creative.
April 13th, 2007 at 6:41 pm
hehehe., you are veery impressive…