Job Discussion Forums

Sashadroogie · Posted: Fri Oct 07, 2011 4:56 am Post subject:

Good points raised so far. A minor one that I'd like to add: choose your personal reading materials carefully. No nineteenth century classic literature, it can be quite dour at the best of times. A couple of light novels got me back on an even keel when I returned home.

nomad soul · Joined: 31 Jan 2010 Posts: 11454 Location: The real world

Jserio, others have made a couple of good suggestions. And since you enjoyed your teaching experience abroad, I'd like to add that doing some ESL volunteer teaching in your city would be beneficial in getting you out of that rut. I'm sure there are several nonprofit community or refugee ESL/literacy programs in your area that could use volunteer help. Consider committing to one day a week as an in-home ESL tutor or classroom assistant--no need to jump into a major, long-term commitment. Helping others in need takes the focus off of yourself and gives you a sense of purpose. Additionally, you'll be part of a teaching community and will have the opportunity to learn new ESL teaching and classroom management skills.

jserio · Joined: 15 Jul 2010 Posts: 61

Hi everyone... I want to say thanks for the input and support. I think time and moving forward is what's needed to get me out of this funk. I am now actively looking for a new ESL position outside of Georgia. I haven't given much thought into volunteering in my community here but it's an idea (many have suggested). However, my primary focus right now is finding new work and a new adventure. Thanks again!

sharter · Joined: 25 Jun 2008 Posts: 878 Location: All over the place

The thing I've found most depressing during all my years abroad has been my moaning, penny pinching colleagues. The students have been mostly great.

thecobra2006 · Joined: 24 May 2009 Posts: 9

Yes, that is my biggest complaint as well. I don't understand why people complain so much about ESL teaching and life abroad. I avoid those people like the plague. Misery loves company.....

Dave · Joined: 12 Jan 2003 Posts: 11 Location: California, USA

Hi, Jserio -- It took me about five months to really get back into the swing of things when I returned to the U.S. after having lived in Japan for seven years. Finding full-time work will help with the transition quite a bit. Good luck!

jibbs · Joined: 02 Feb 2003 Posts: 452

Ah yes, I just recently started a thread called "culture shock" and was directed here. I think it can be stronger coming back to the home country. My hometown is also just a small place, a community really, and it had been so long I forgot just how small it is. A few things have changed, not much. It's odd seeing old faces after so long. And the accents! Some are almost the same as a decade or more ago it seems. Things are or seem stricter in some ways too, which is odd to me. It used to be more easygoing. I might seem depressed, not sure, but it feels more like amazement that I never noticed all this in this way before. How inane TV is for example. Like totally insane and idiotic. And the choices at the stores!

Anyway, the life abroad long-term can change your outlook without you realizing it until you try re-entering the society you came from. You might have a "wider" perspective on things, or so you'd like to imagine, or to others you might just seem strange. A simple example I'll use is using scissors to cut meat. I've only seen that done in Asia, and it just makes more sense for some things really. But a lifetime local might just see it as weird because nobody does that here. In the same vein you bring your "western" ways overseas, and locals there see some things you do as odd too.

nomad soul · Joined: 31 Jan 2010 Posts: 11454 Location: The real world

JustinC · Posted: Fri May 03, 2013 1:07 pm Post subject:

It might have been a kind of reverse culture shock I experienced after my first stint overseas (Wuhan in 2006), I don't know, but I was strongly committed to trying teaching in a foreign country when I left the UK and pretty keen on leaving again and trying a different country and age group.

A friend back then told me "Be careful, it's addictive" and I haven't forgotten her advice, however misgiven it may have been (she, unfortunately, was in a bad academy in her first and only year as a TEFL). I've met a few other teachers who've been of the opinion that the positive emotional impact is in starting a new job in a new country/city; being the chameleon that Johnslat mentioned. Keeping the brain flexible is a good thing, is it not?

When I first returned to the UK I didn't find it particularly more oppressive or less appealing than when I first left, but I was slightly more convinced that it wasn't a place I wanted to return to, for any lengthy period, in the near future. I have plenty of family and friends there who are doing just as well (or better) as they were when I left before the present crisis started, and my thoughts on politics are between benign and agnostic, so I don't think my view of the UK has been particularly bleak or flattering at any time.

MotherF · Posted: Fri May 03, 2013 3:42 pm Post subject:

My solution as a teacher has been to never go home.
But I studied abroad in Chile in 1993, and I had to go back to finish university. It was years before the movie, choose to go to Chile, I took the red pill. I'd lived a very sheltered life of a middle class midwesterner. I'd never been "the other". To see the US from the outside like that. That was a game changer. And there were many many times during my first year back that I wished I'd choosen the blue pill.

In a way, this life is worse than the movie, because in the movie, once you see the matrix from the outside you are in a different world. But in this life, we still have to live in the matrix.

jibbs · Joined: 02 Feb 2003 Posts: 452

In some ways it can be pleasant, this altered perspective. Of course we get older too. Maybe you question things more over time anyway. Things that were important once may seem trivial now.