or Why I Am Considering the Possibility of Becoming a Missio…I Mean English Teacher in the Far East
[NOTE: This is the first of a three-part series. Here is the second installment. And here is the final installment.]
Don’t worry. I am not packing my bags and preparing to hop a plane over there as I write this. It will probably take me several months to a year to decide definitely whether or not I intend to do this. After that, it will probably take another several months to a year to complete all the necessary preparations. So I will still be around for a little while.
Still, since this possibility is on my radar screen, I feel it necessary to let you know and to share with you my reasons for considering it. Some of these are good, some are downright selfish, and some are just plain ugly. But for better or worse, they are all mine.
The Groundwork
To begin with, let me share a personal news item which is largely responsible for why I am considering the possibility of China in the first place.
I am now out of a job.
It happened last Friday. Last Friday began as an ordinary and uneventful day, just like almost every other day at my former company. I was in the middle of a task which I had been given the previous day, and which I was under pressure to finish by the end of the day. That is how life is at my former company. There are seasons when there is not much to do and you are free to take your time with whatever work you have been assigned. Then something urgent will come up which must be completed as soon as possible. “Hurry up and wait” is what this rhythm of life is called, and I was in the middle of a “hurry up” season.
So I arrived Friday morning at my usual time, fixed my tea (I drink tea instead of coffee these days), and settled down to resume my work where I had left off the previous evening.
Little did I know that four hours later I would be out of a job.
It happened at 11:30 Friday morning. There was a company-wide meeting in our conference room. The CEO, reading from a handwritten statement prepared in advance, said that the company was now in the downward side of the business cycle, and as a result layoffs would be necessary. Everyone in the company received a sealed envelope and then left the room–some, to leave for lunch, others, to clean out their desks and leave, never to return again–all depending on what was in the envelope that each person received. Some of the envelopes contained separation materials (final paychecks, unemployment information, 401(k) rollover forms, COBRA materials, etc). I do not know what the other envelopes contained–I was not sufficiently blessed to be privy to that information. If I knew that, I would not be writing this.
So what happens now? Where do I go from here?
In the short term, I am considering the possibility of waiting tables. This is something which I had considered doing on a part-time basis to ramp up my savings toward key financial objectives (such as buying a house, marriage, family, and perhaps graduate school or even seminary). This is something which, believe it or not, I have been kind of wanting to try my hand at. I have served as a greeter at 7:22 (a large Bible study here in Atlanta which happens every Tuesday night–go to www.722.org for more information on this) for several years, and I have greatly enjoyed the interaction with other people that I have had in that environment. I figure that I would probably enjoy the interaction with other people which comes as part of waiting tables.
I have no idea what the money is like waiting tables, although I hear it can be decent, depending on where you go. Maybe enough to make up for the amount of revenue that I am attempting to replace, or maybe even more. But the key thing for me at this point is not so much the money but the opportunity to have a place to go during the day and be a functioning, contributing member of society, working with my hands in order to provide (if only for myself) and to have something to offer those in need, no matter how little.
I do not relish the prospect of days with nothing to do. Nor do I relish the prospect of a long and grueling job search, which may include going back to school for long stretches of time. I remember the first job search that I went through after I graduated from college. This was a grueling ordeal which lasted for almost two years and included temp jobs, long stretches of school, and a string of several failed interviews which finally led to my current (well, not current anymore) position. I remember the long stretches of time when I was without work, living at home with nothing to do during the day. It was nice and relaxing for the first couple of weeks, but after that it grew to be a gruesome burden. I felt like nothing but a worthless bum. I felt that I should be out working, that if I had any real worth as a person I would be out working, and certainly not having the problems that I was having in my job search. This burden grew upon me as the weeks stretched into months and the months into years. And this was back in the mid 1990’s, when the economy was still somewhat prosperous! There was no glut of computer professionals on the market as a result of the dot-com bust and the ensuing economic downturn, no glut of laid-off Delta employees looking for work, no glut of New Orleans hurricane evacuees looking for work in our area, to compete against back in the mid 90’s during my first job search. I don’t even want to think what lies ahead for me in the weeks and months to come.
(By the way, please don’t hear me as begrudging the presence of hurricane evacuees in our area. I do not. Actually, I am very sorry to now be in the position of having to compete against them for the limited (and rapidly shrinking) number of jobs available in our area.)
In the long term, I am considering the possibility of going to China to teach English. My best friend from college is teaching at a university there, and has been for several years. Over the last couple of years I have had the desire to follow in his footsteps. I will now be considering this much more seriously than before.
The agency that my friend is with has a couple of summer programs which looked interesting to me. I have considered them in the past, but rejected them because they required a two-month commitment, and I was unsure if my then-current job would have allowed me to take that long a leave of absence. Now that this is no longer an issue, I will look into these programs again. Hopefully I will be able to go next summer. Then, if it works out well for me, I will consider going over there on a long-term basis, for at least two years and possibly longer.
Stay tuned for the next installment, in which I will begin to unpack in greater detail my reasons for considering the possibility of going to China. I will start with the bad and the ugly, then move on to the good.
