Job Hunting

My sad, sad Gold Star Chart. Needs work.

I want a cookie, gold star, high five and whatever else you’re willing to give. My last month has been stupid rough. I don’t want to get out of bed. I eat only because I have to, and I’ve not been to the gym for more than four hours in the last three weeks combined. So yeah, it sucks.

I’m tired, but I can’t sleep. And actually, I don’t want to sleep. It sounds crazy, because it (quite possibly) is. When I sleep, I have nightmares that make me not want to sleep again. What kind of crazy am I talking about? Well...in the past ten days, these have been my dreams: EVERY single member of my family dies (and no one told me), I’ve been a murder victim (several times in several different ways. Last night I was thrown down an escalator) and I’ve fallen off a bridge into a sea of glass. Needless to say, sleep and I are even less friendly than usual; I’m probably already in the early stages of sleep deprivation. That or nearing a heart attack.

Not being able to sleep means I can’t think, which means I can’t function and I’m all kinds of “off”. Seemingly stupid things drive me absolutely insane now. One of those things that makes me rage far more than it should is searching for a job.

Yes, yes, yes. It’s about that time. Finding a way to pay my rent is sorta kinda important. The most feasible job for me is as an “English Teacher” at an after school program or a summer camp. The money is great compared to anything else I could probably find. Most part time jobs I’ve seen offer 6,000~10,000 won (about $6~$10 an hour). That’s *no joke* less than what I made at my first job when I was 14. The thing about teaching is that you often have to have a proper teaching visa, and because I’m from the US, it is a HUGE hassle.

In order to teach, you have to have a criminal background check. That makes sense. You don’t want a child molester or serial killer coming to your school. Fair enough. A federal (national-level) check? Okay. Because some people figured out that you can commit a crime in one state, go to another and it doesn’t show up on the new record in the new state. But why...why why why do I need to get the national level (FROM THE FEDS) check apostilled? The background check is coming straight from the FBI Criminal Justice Investigative System branch in West Virginia, that’s fingerprint headquarters. It takes several weeks to get the background check done (because there’s no such thing as fast and efficient government) and THEN I have to send it off to another agency to have them certify that it’s real. That’s ridiculous and it can take up to 8 weeks. 

But my real issue is this: only foreign teachers have to do it, and then, only teachers going for E-2 (Teaching) visas. That’s discrimination, and I’m the last person who will usually complain about that. Really? There are no Korean child molesters or serial killers? Foreigners who are married to Koreans are automatically “safe” people? If you want to check backgrounds, why not do it for everyone coming into the country? Students can kill people. Industrial workers can be child molesters. No. It’s only the foreign teachers.  Same with STD and HIV testing (and that stuff ain’t cheap). Only foreign teachers have to do it. Considering the ratio of foreign teachers to all the other foreigners in the country (tourists, workers, students, spouses), I’m pretty sure that more of them are carriers of the dreaded STDs. I also happen to know more than a few Koreans who don't always wrap before they tap....But, you know, only foreigner English teachers have STDs.

Fun fact: the Korean government actually got in trouble with the UN’s Human Rights Council because some people finally brought forth that STD testing has nothing to do with teaching and is only applied to foreigners who are teaching. Moreover, so what if someone has syphilis? It’s not like they’re going to give it to their students. Easily communicable diseases like Hepatitis and Tuberculosis I can understand, but having an untrained lab technician stab me in the arm so you can see if I’ve got HIV? Pointless.

There’s another thing about job searching that really irks me here, more than any other places I’ve applied for jobs (US, Japan, Philippines, China): the lack of a response. The POLITE thing to do if someone applied for a job and you don’t want to hire them is to send them some sort of a rejection or at least an acknowledgment that you got an application from them. Here, nothing. I’ve applied to 10+ jobs and heard back from ONE.  I understand being busy and blah blah blah, but that’s just wrong. I’m tempted to add “Please respond, even if the answer is no”, because this non-responsive crap has got to stop.

Trying to keep my head up and not get discouraged, but that's much easier said than done. Enough for now. Back to scanning the internet for ads... But on an unrelated note: organ sales need to be a legal thing. $3,000 for bone marrow and $10,000 for a kidney?! Bone marrow replenishes and I only need one kidney to survive...