The Cynical Career Counselor Explains Your Future as an

International English Teacher

Hi--wow, is it time for you to be graduating already? I remember when your older brother and sister came through, and now here you are--almost done with high school. So--your brother still doing the nuclear physicist thing? How about your sister? Right--that is an impressive med school she's at.

So--what about you? Law? Commerce? Politics? What's that? Really? No, no--of course there's nothing wrong with it. I mean, I see ex-students drift in here all the time who've finished some sort of four-year degree in some obscure aspect of some social science or literature study and well--it's what they sort of fall back on when they realize their academic qualifications won't get them a real job anywhere.

But of course, you're different. You actually WANT to do this before you even start college. Aim for the stars, I say. Er, no--I wasn't being sarcastic... Look, it will go something like this:

You'll do an undergraduate degree in English--don't go too obscure, though, and make sure you get a good dose of introductory writing and linguistics. Who knows what parsing verbs involves--but the dinosaurs who recruit for some of these agencies--particularly in former brit colonies like Hong Kong--they are stuck in the dark ages and figure you need to know how to diagram sentences and stuff like that.

Once you're done you can go to some local recruitment agency, or contact the schools directly yourself. Most likely you'll choose Japan--the salaries look deceptively good, until you get there and realize that it costs more to live humbly in a tiny closet of an apartment there than it does to own an acreage and drive a luxury car here.

The work won't be fun--most of the kids you teach are motivated, but their friends who could afford it, or whose parents would let them all went to North America or Europe for a year or two to immerse themselves in the language. They're the losers who get stuck with you, and they'll resent you for it.

You will be lonely when you realize after six months that your dating options are limited in a society which wants your language but subtly signals your social inferiority. Just like now, you were in a serious relationship when you left to go to Japan, so you convince your girlfriend to move across the Pacific and join you.

The apartment is small, and it's not long before the two of you start to crowd each other. Meanwhile, she has no desire to teach but she does manage to make some inroads into other work--I hear a girl who's considered a "7" here is given at least a two-point bump up on the attractiveness scale there, so she'll be pretty much treated like a movie star by some people there, especially if she's blond.

She'll enjoy the attention, and your long hours won't help solidify your relationship. Soon she's working somewhere that pays well for girls to hang around and look pretty--maybe she'll serve drinks in a karaoke place, or learn Japanese etiquette in some tea room.

One day you come home and notice she's got some new jewelry you didn't buy her. She'll be embarassed, but eventually you'll get the story out of her--some wealthy industrialist or financier has become a sort of "patron" to her. She'll try to explain it's not like it is back home--it's the whole 'geisha' tradition or something like it, she'll say. You'll be obstinate and insist she give it back, but she'll stomp out and later some sort of deferential bodyguard/lackey type will come to pick up her things.

You won't hear from her for a few days, but when you do she'll invite you to her new place. It will be twice as big as the one she shared with you, and when you ask how she pays for it, she'll explain it's a gift from a friend. Now you're sure she's become someone's mistress, and she slaps you when you say so.

You throw yourself into your teaching, but it makes little difference--in fact, some of the students seem to sense your desperation and begin subtly mocking or taunting you. One seems to feel sorry for you, and he quietly gives you a present one day--a t-shirt. You wear it on the subway--the front has writing in some Japanese characters you don't understand--and almost get beaten by angry commuters. Apparently your generous student was just more clever; the shirt boldly proclaimed some rather nasty things about the emperor's personal hygiene habits and you suddenly have to find a new commuting route to work.

A month or two later, your girlfriend calls--seems all the gifts weren't entirely without strings, and she doesn't like the pressure and possessiveness of one or two of her new friends. That night she shows up at your door and you quickly forgive everything--you are simply glad to have a friendly face around again.

The next day when you get home, two men are waiting on your stairwell--one of them is the same guy who picked up your girlfriend's stuff before. This time there's no pretence of respect--they administer a quick but effective beating and tell you "the girl must be returned".

She feels terrible when she sees your battered face, but you do the noble thing and give her the money you'd been putting aside for a vacation back home, and tell her to fly back to her family. It pains you to do it--you want to go back with her, but you have a binding contract and with the high cost of living, it took some pretty painful scrimping just to save her plane fare.

Luckily, her leaving seems to end the interest of the thugs in rearranging your face, and you are left alone. You finish out the year and decide to leave Japan. Still, you're not prepared to face your family and admit you're once again the loser of the brood. Instead, you decide to try your luck elsewhere.

You think about Hong Kong, but there's that whole British prep-school prejudice plus the cost of living there is just as outrageous as Japan.

Then you're offered something promising in Seoul, so you sign on with a Korean school and soon you're doing the late afternoon shift for high school kids who hate you because their parents force them to do 14-hour school days--regular school and then your monotonous lessons--followed by several hours of homework after that.

You begin hitting the bar late after your evening class is done--fortunately your late starts allow you to lose most of the hangover before you face the kids again the next day. One bar becomes your regular haunt, and you find a bit of a social life--you play cards over the mindless soundtrack of k-pop and dig out the offensive shirt from Japan--everyone at the bar laughed at the story of how your shirt angered the Japanese, and a few even get the emperor-bashing slogan copied for shirts of their own.

You meet a Korean girl who speaks excellent English. She too teaches at the school, and you're shocked someone as pretty and graceful as her could want you. (Did I mention your self esteem will have become pretty battered by now?)

Six months and your friendship has evolved into a romance and then an engagement. You secretly breathe a sigh of relief when she tells you her parents are both dead, and she has no immediate family--you've heard horror stories of girls whose families rejected the idea of their marrying a westerner.

She insists, though, on the two of you travelling back to America to meet your family--she says since they will become her only real family, besides you, she wants to get to know them. You don't mind--you kind of want to show her off to a family who you feel has always kind of measured you and found you to be wanting. Also, it doesn't hurt that she can pay her share of the cost.

You tell her all about your family as you fly home, and you notice she seems most interested in your older brother, the physicist. You try not to dwell on it, but when you get home and your family gathers to see you, it's almost embarassing how she fawns over him. As a workaholic overachiever, he is a little vulnerable at the time because of his recent divorce, so sadly you will wake up one night to find she's nowhere in your parents' house, and when you drive to his place you'll catch her sneaking out to a waiting cab.

She'll beg your forgiveness and as always, you'll relent. You stay another week, and try not to worry when she goes off on her "private shopping trips to buy something for you" that maybe she's meeting up with your brother again.

You are relieved when it's time to head back to Seoul, but it's shortlived because there at the airport waiting for you are both American and South Korean agents who find secret nuclear information stashed in the lining of one of your suitcases.

After you're subject to intense grilling for several days, word comes down that the authorities have identified your fiance as a deep-cover North Korean agent.

You're devasted, but feel no sympathy when you hear your brother is arrested back home and sentenced to five years in prison. Unfortunately, your parents blame you for the fate of their favorite child, and cut off all contact with you.

Despondent, you drift into a relationship with the first woman who'll have you--a widowed cat groomer ten years your senior who shares a small hovel 50 miles south of the city with her child--a 30 year old drug dealing small time street thug. She though, is a very devout woman--a card carrying member of the Unification Church or the Moonies or whatever they're called now.

She'll take you to a mass marriage one day; you'll have pretty much lost the will to live by this point--and in some sort of trick of weird Moonie bureaucracy, you'll end up marrying her older sister who regrets the marriage within weeks and arranges to have her thug nephew kill you for the insurance money. Trust me, when the time comes, it will seem like a blessing.

Oh--say hi to your brother and sister for me next time you talk to them.