It is difficult
to reflect on my career because I have never really had a career. Mostly, I have been planning for a
career. Of the past 27 years I have been
a full time student for something like 25 of them. My university education, which included
undergrad, grad and doctorate studies, occupied something like ten or twelve years. That was a long time without a real job (but
with a lot of hard work) and little money.
And making a radical transition to a different field in a different
country means that most of the education and social capital I built up counts
for nothing and is effectively useless.
Although I am
now employed at a university, a long time goal, it feels much more like my
career is just beginning. The hiring
process and contract situation we face in Korea makes university employment
more like a short term gig than a lifetime career. The workplace has a high turnover and doesn’t
seem to even offer raises from contract to contract. I am not tenure track, don’t have a long term
contract, and am not at a university that affords much opportunity for
advancement in terms of teaching or administrative positions. I still view my position as tenuous and
temporary and always expect the whole thing to disappear tomorrow as part of
some bureaucratic change in rules or economic restructuring. As such it makes it difficult to consider
this has a career.
Part of this
comes from the marginal position I occupy in Korean society. Although many Westerners love to adopt the
moniker “ex-pat” we are all just immigrant labor, useful so long as we are
cheap and disposable. This is especially
true in the hagwons where they just grind up and shit on the teachers who must
employers know have very little recourse or alternative. The uni isn’t as bad at the hagwon, but the
power imbalance remains tilted very heavily.
Otherwise, I
enjoy living in Korea and don’t find getting by in daily life to be any
different from USA. I didn’t have social
responsibilities or obligations there, and as an outsider I am free from them
here as well. I also find Korea to be
very comfortable and accessible and easy to adapt to. I found Seattle to be far more marginalizing
and alienating, so Seoul is actually a big step up. It is a lot easier to meet like minded
interesting people, the pace of life and weather is more like what I am used to
and the social customs, while different, don’t feel foreign or uncomfortable. There is a lot of life in a dynamic,
increasingly cosmopolitan city like Seoul that is welcoming and enjoyable.
