I'm applying for some part time jobs. I haven't updated (haven't had to update) my resume and materials for over a decade, so I give myself a little credit for taking some serious time to work on these things over the past few weeks.
In lieu of a longer post on how tough it is to find a job after coming back from South Korea, something that so many people droned on about when I lived in Daegu, I just have to say that, well, you get back what you put in. For starters, yes, not having a network sucks but then again, I'm living in a place where I literally know nobody except my Dad and his immediate neighbors. A good network probably wouldn't be that much help to me right now due to simple geography. Next, and this was my feeling back in Korea, you're going to develop as much or as little as a professional as you want to no matter where you live. Believe me, I'm not a diligent self-starter by any means, but during my 12 years abroad I managed to learn some of the language, co-publish a scholarly article, edited an ESL text by a professor at my college, and let my boss know that I'd be happy to help him edit (or write) things for the school as needed. I also developed, or created from nothing, a decent set of teaching materials that I might end up using again.
The point being, I'm not sure why teaching English abroad is seen as a professional black hole by so many folks. It certainly doesn't qualify me for doing brain surgery, but over the years I feel like I did a reasonable job at self-improvement and, more bluntly, getting worthwhile stuff onto my resume. And it seems like my secondary cultural experiences don't hurt -- if anything, maybe I stand out a bit.
It's a process of course, and we'll see how it goes. I've applied for both classroom teaching jobs and more education-adjacent positions. Putting my cover letter together I never felt weakened or at a loss for explaining why a decade in Korea makes me a stronger candidate than I was before I left.
I should have worked harder on my Korean, definitely. But it was nice to hear from some of my former bosses that they'd be more than happy to give me positive recommendations. My resume has a larger "narrative" that I can handle teaching ESL or English composition, and that I had a fairly productive last decade. I'm not sure what more ESL folks are expecting from work history, either in Korea or in some mythical "perfect" job back here in America.
Work is work.
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