Korean Job Discussion Forums

[VanIslander]

Back in my home country I have worked 60+ hours a week in a different profession and have yet felt energized and ready to keep going after a great 8-10 hour day at work.

Here in Korea I work 30 or less hours a week as an EFL teacher and after a 4 or 6 hour day I am drained, exhausted.

Does anybody usually feel energized after doing this sort of work? Or is a lack of energy a sign that one may not be ideally suited for ESL teaching?

I really like my work so I think one's level of enjoyment is beside the point.

[matthewwoodford]

If the lessons go well I leave with a buzz, if not I feel drained...same as with any job.

[Homer]

Good question Van.

But were you teaching back home?

One has to consider how draining a full day of teaching can be.

[VanIslander]

No Homer. I was working in a different profession back home. (I was a newspaper journalist.) I don't want to assume that it is a particular profession that is draining. That would beg the question I'm trying to raise:

Is ESL teaching inherently draining or not?

More specifically, What's your experience with this kind of work compared to other kinds of work?

[Homer]

[Son Deureo!]

I found teaching children very draining. I don't feel the same way about teaching adults. Teaching children is like war. They don't want to be there, you don't want to be there, but somehow you have to get through it.

With adults, even if they aren't exactly enthusiastic they aren't hiding under the table, begging for games, or trying to ram their digits up your ass. That makes the actual work much less tiring. Unfortunately, the crappy hours more than make up for the difference.

[Dr.Caligari]

I'm teaching a course now (in U.S) before I head over in August and.... Yeah, I find it draining, but when something clicks with the students and they're excited, I feel wound up when I get home. Today we lugged them around on a field trip, and it was fun and easy, but oddly much more exhausting. I took a huge nap when I got home.

[katydid]

I am usually drained after work, because I do not get a good night's sleep, and seeing 200 adolescent girls a day IS truly draining. But I don't think it's a bad sign that I am not cut out for the job. In fact I quite like it.

[Eazy_E]

[jaderedux]

I see about 200 middle school boys every single day. I am ON all the time. I have to be energetic, attentive and attilla the hun sometimes.

I love my job! But more often than not I am completely drained after work. I give 100% and then some everyday. I have very little down time and the teachers room is a teachers room in name only. The students camp by my desk wanting to practice english etc.

I love my students and the teachers I work with...but I am happy to be seeing vacation coming!

Jade

[Son Deureo!]

[oneiros]

Just to give you the medical persppective on this:

A Korean doctor told a co-worker of mine that teachers don't live as long as other professions, because teachers give out their energy all day.

Something to think about.

[captain kirk]

I feel drained at the end of the day. I talk jauntily in cheerful burps to the teachers I feel akin to on the way in. But at the end of the day I've no more 'social gas' it having been burned up as fuel having a laugh, class after class, with the kids who are a 'gas'. That's true for all the teachers at work. And the Korean teachers, if they're still there, are toiling talking to the Moms on the phone which has got to be a chore at that hour. That is I 'feel drained' for an hour or so until I get into some project at home which has nothing to do with work.
I don't believe in horroscopes and New Age philosophies so when I say that I juice vegetables and drink that at work don't take it the wrong way and call me flakey. I have a big, centrifugal, pulp-ejecting juicer with a titanium blade from Homeplus for ninety thousand won. I buy a 20 kilo box of carrots for man won from the city farmer's market and juice through one of those in five days. And a third of a pineapple a day added for sweetness. Or a couple of peaches which are cheap and in season now. With that 'juice' to catch up to the vivid sponaneity of energetic kids I'm in a position to enjoy their company more, and 'be in command'. I take some ginseng, as well. And I meditate at night, after work. Have an espresso machine from Walmart (40 thousand). Have a jolt in the morning before work and one getting home before staying up and doing stuff at home for six hours or so before getting to bed. There's no way I'd go to work hung-over or partially. Without the energy to enjoy them kids become 'an annoyance'. And they aren't. They're full of life. To fully appreciate them it's necessary to be 'vibrating' at their high rate like a whizzing top. Being sick with a flu or run down is the worst. In a way working with kids keeps you young but you have to be young to feel young, if you know what I mean. Kids aren't constipated with stodgy blockages. And when they like you, if you look for it, they feed the teacher with energy with their natural kindness, helpfulness, and wish to please. I do origami paper folding between classes to clear my mind for the next bout. And alot of the kids are better at it than I am. 'Going down' to their level, what they're interested in, puts you in a position to appreciate them and gain energy from having sincere encounters with them.
I usually feel 'drained' if I've 'taken offense' at some 'transgressions'. Some rebellious coup on the part of some childish mutineers which will be clamped down upon next class.

[Blind Willie]

[Zyzyfer]

Teaching requires using the noggin. Using the noggin can strangely exhaust you. I have got some awesome classes for this summer session at my school, and I still feel tired at the end of the day. No behavioral problems, no lack of study problems, nothing. Instead, I'm on the go, planning lessons, looking up vocabulary, thinking about why it's answer D and C doesn't quite work, and explaining a bazillion little things. It's taxing, all that thinking...