Updates

Alas, my money was released and I can pay my bills. It sounds like this will happen every time I send money to South Africa due to some new laws that requires beneficiaries to agree to receiving money from abroad. The beneficiary, in this case is me; but since I’m not in South Africa at the time the money is send abroad, the bank cannot contact me to get my permission, hence all the hassle. To get things right I have to do all kinds of paperwork and probably go to the South African embassy. Sorry, America, for accusing you of stealing my money because of your economic crisis.

My stalking taxi driver is still calling me pretty much every day. You may wonder why I answer the phone. The thing is, the phone I have does not have Caller-ID, so I do not know who is phoning until I answer. The second thing you might wonder is why don’t I just curse the guy and tell him to leave me the *&^$@# alone. Firstly, I don’t like cussing; and secondly, he is a friendly old man and might not have peculiar intentions – in which case, I don’t want to insult him unnecessarily. Luckily, I will be getting a new phone in a couple of weeks and I plan to change my number too. No, I’m not getting the new phone just because of him; actually, a friend gave me the phone a while back, but I’ll only be able to start a new contract when I get my updated Visa in a couple of days. Another reason for changing my number is that some students got hold of it, which makes me uncomfortable as they don’t respect working versus non-working hours.

I’ve been grumpy for a number of days now. Part of it has to do with my disillusionment with my work and the cultural clash between my goals and the goals of my students. In short, my goal is to help them with language assimilation and, more importantly, to teach them skills. Their goal is to quickly memorize something for a test, get a good grade, and then forget that which they memorized. Or, to get a high grade, without having done the work that such a grade represents; and to blame me if they did not get the mark they wanted. All of this made me question my function here. If I give in to the Korean way of doing things (i.e. giving them a list of facts to memorize, rather than nurturing in them skills), I’d be unfaithful to myself. If I continue my own way, I’d be very unpopular and continue this cycle of tremendous amounts of complaints every semester from disillusioned students that thinks their grades reflects whether I like them or not. (Yes, I’m still trying to get my head around that one! I actually had students that received low grades ask me why I don’t like them!)

I can either comply and give them the type of teaching style they wish for, or I can continue as I’m doing and actually inspire a small number of them to grow. If I go with the first method, there will be many more happy students, I’d have less work (because it requires less preparation), and I’d get far less complaints at the end of each semester. However, I will get little job satisfaction and feel myself dishonest to my calling; which is to nurture growth, not merely puking facts and have them puke facts back at me, no thinking required. On the other hand, if I continue with the second teaching style, I will have to endure their griping all the time, but at least I will be in harmony with my integrity. There will be less outward peace, but more inward peace. I’ll be in line with my conscience. And hopefully, in the process, I will inspire a handful of students that actually do want to learn something.

So, after almost a month of re-evaluating my purpose in life (or at least, my purpose as a lecturer at a university here in Korea), I’ve come to terms with what I can expect of myself and of the future. It is possible that if enough students complain I might get sacked. Be that as it may, I cannot compromise my integrity and conscience as a teacher. This is a university, and I will therefore require of my students to think, whether they like it or not.