Alive. I am.

I haven't had a reason, or much of a reason to why I stopped writing these past couple months.  Among the contributing factors is a brain on tape delay, and more importantly, the noticeable degradation of my only working language, which I believe is suffering from pretty serious abuse.

When you teach English to English speaking students, you have the luxury of being verbose.  If they don't know the meaning of verbose, they can hit a dictionary.  I like being verbose, I like writing and talking in a flowery round about way.  I enjoy the way English works, how I can say the same thing twenty ways and probably still have options.  When you teach English as a second language, that option isn't there.  It is simple or nothing.  So my English isn't being used poorly, but rather simply, and in a world where your only working language isn't being properly bolstered and massaged, you tend to fall into some bad habits.

I'm in this weird catch-22 where the only place I can properly use the language at the level I wish is on this blog, and sadly never have the necessary motivation, inspiration or desire to write one.  My proficiency has been unexpectedly stunted.  Not irreversibly, but I have found that I need to try a lot harder.  Maybe I will just read more, and try to absorb better habits that way.

So, some updates:

Pat and Jenn's challenge:

Get a photo of you at a bar watching an nhl playoff game.

Here is a dated photo of the Kings playing the Coyotes in the Stanley Cup Finals.  This game was old even when it was being played.  I bet the Kings win the cup.

Rachel's challenge:

Swim in the pacific. 
     
I've swam in the Pacific before, but never on this side.  This was Utsumi beach, and it's about an hour from where I live by train.










Other updates:

I went to Iga Ueno, in Mie prefecture and learned that the Japanese Ninja of old had many ways to predict rain.  I reckon it rained a lot. 

I also went to Ise, which is also in Mie prefecture.  It is home to Ise shrine, the largest of all Shinto shrines in Japan.  Ise shrine is large, beautiful and very peaceful.  The trees I saw there were the largest I've seen in Japan.  It consists of an inner and outer shrine, this is a photo of the inner.

 

While in Mie, I also went to the coast and saw Meoto Iwa, the married rocks of Japan.  These rocks celebrate the union of marriage (between a man and woman specifically, I'm told), and apparently the rope weighs over a tonne and is changed many times every year.

                  

I also went to Nagoya city zoo.  I saw this bear, and I love him.  He's a Yezo bear, and they are found far to the north in Hokkaido.  Yezo is an old name for Hokkaido.  Also known as the black grizzly.

I got a love letter from a five year old.

My student Chika tried to spell donut:

I saw this monstrosity.

And, I learned to never quit.

Things are fine.  

Coming up is my summer vacation.  Starting on the 6th of August, and going for two weeks, I will not be required to put on nice pants, or a collared shirt and go to work.  For two weeks, I have absolute freedom of movement and thought.

My official plan as of right now is to disappear, and see where I end up.  This might mean a hiatus from the internet, aside from access on my phone for navigation.  That is a loose plan, and we'll see how that pans out.  I'll let you know how it goes.  Nagoya is absurdly hot and humid, and apparently runs a close second to the south island paradise of Okinawa in terms of top temperatures.  I reckon anywhere will be cooler.

Sorry for the delay.

Much love,

Sean 

Dragons!

I had an outing.   I feel like every year I go to at least one baseball game; some random Blue Jays game against some team on some random Saturday, where we show up at the gates and get cheap tickets for cheap seats - enjoying the game with a beer in the nose bleeds.  Well for reasons easy to divine, my ability to see the Jays play this year has been some what limited.  However, baseball wasn't out of the question, and on Sunday I met up with some other ECC instructors, and we paid our way into the rather spacious Nagoya dome.

The game was a good one, and the hometown Chunichi Dragons aren't a team to disappoint.  As the 2011 champions of their division, the local baseballers are one of the best teams in Japan, and from what I hear, always put on a good show at home.

They were playing another team from their division in the Lions, and spotted them a two run lead in the fourth that seemed insurmountable for the majority of the game.  Yet, in the bottom of the seventh, the Dragons finally found home plate and exited the inning with the deficit cut in half.

The Lions put up a tough front again in the eighth, and almost managed to shut the Dragons down with runners in scoring position.  Then, on an error for the third out, the shortstop overthrew first and the Chunichi found home plate for the second time!  The flood gates opened and the home team scored another four runs on four batters.

A quick top of the ninth and the game was over, Dragons six, Lions two!  It was a pretty amazing game, and the fans were maybe the best part.  There was so much energy and excitement during the comeback that it was palpable in the air, a raw enthusiasm carried by song and chant that I don't think is possible in the vacuous emptiness of Rogers stadium.

Here are some videos:

Here are the cheerleaders and silly mascots doing some dancing before the game:

 

 Here is the last out at the bottom of the seventh inning, the Dragons are up to bat. What they are chanting is the batter's name:

 


 Here is the kind of crazy things they play on the screen. The screen wasn't very well utilized, but when they played the pump up videos it was intense. The Dragon's mascots are two Dragons, pink and blue, and a Koala named Doala:


 


As a bonus, here are some pictures of my Monday/ Tuesday classroom:

And here is the board after one of my classes with older students. Team 'The Seans?' narrowly pulled off a victory over 'Team English' during a marathon battle of janken snake:

Vending Machine Roulette: Match

Vending machines in Japan are unique from the rest of the world.  Not only are they everywhere, and I mean absolutely everywhere, they're ubiquity is only outstripped by their availability of selection.  I would be willing to wager that there are at least eight different companies with vending machines set up around Japan, and in every vending machine there is no less than ten different drinks.

If you can't find something you enjoy, then have some water.

With this in mind, I'd like to introduce a new feature to this blog of mine!  Everyone put your hands together for Vending Machine Roulette!  Please come with me on a journey for the ages, as I venture out on a magnificent quest to buy, try and review every single beverage available for purchase from Japanese vending machines.




Today's drink is something called Match.  Aside from sporting a fancy yellow colour, and taking up residence in a tiny little machine next to an off white liquid called 'Pro-Sweat', which may or may not be real sweat, bottles of Match come with a fun little pump up message:  Let's Vitamin!  Yes!  Let us Vitamin!

In the area of taste, it is on the borderline of too sweat and addicting.  Its flavour is that of liquified candy. If you took all the rockets you received as kid while trick or treating, probably not an inconsiderable amount, and blended them with syrup into a yellowy broth, you would create something with a taste very similar to match.

I've only found two vending machines holding the stuff, and they were located on a shady train platform and a dark alley, respectively.

Let us vitamin!


Ciao,

Sean

Challenge Completed: Italia Mura!

"Visit the Italia Mura and explain to me why its called "italia"...is it italian themed...its near the port so is it safe to consider it the "jersey shore" of Nagoya?"

I chose this challenge as my first one because I thought it would be a fairly easy task in which to get my feet wet.  As with any time that I set out to be an intrepid adventurer, I decided to start my trek to the Italia Mura with a little bit of research.  I was interested mostly in where I could find the place, but also was curious as to whether it was a shopping center, or a market or perhaps something else entirely.

With these questions in mind I swiftly opened my browser to google, and  hastily typed 'nagoya itali-' before the autofill function relieved me of the need to say anything further.  A click later and I was on a Wikipedia page, having to come to terms with some rather harsh news.  It read:

"Italia Mura (イタリア村) was a mall located near the port of Nagoya, Japan. Its main attractions were a reproduction of one of Venice's canals and the San Marco Square along with its cafés and orchestra."


The first thing you notice is the use of the word was.  Italia Mura was a mall.  Next you notice the word were.  Its main attractions were a reproduction of one of Venice's canals.  The article summarized with this:

"On May 7, 2008, Italian Mura was closed due to financial difficulties, as the management claimed."   

I was no longer dealing with the concept of a bustling, fast paced Italian market.  What I had signed on to explore was instead, an extinct Italian homage, four years to the wind.  With this new found knowledge I decided to break my challenge into the important questions.

• Does it even exist, and if so, in what capacity?
• Why is it called 'Italia', is it Italian themed? 
• Is it the Jersey Shore of Nagoya?

Does it even exist?

With this question first and foremost, I set out this morning by bicycle, and managed to get to the port within a reasonable amount of time.  I would have been quicker, but I had to make a necessary detour to one of the many Mr.Donuts found in Japan.  I used my rest stop as an opportunity to feed my coffee addiction and do some people watching.  

Nagoya Port is really nice, and especially so today because the weather was exceptional.  The Aquarium sat stalwartly to the far right of the large paved shorefront, and to its open doors streamed countless children.  However, this time around I wasn't interested in that inverted Ocean, and instead turned my bike to the left side of the large jetty, where there were very few people to be found.  

Nagoya Port is actually quite incredible and diverse.  Besides the aquarium, there is a maritime museum, a docked Arctic exploration vessel and a park, which is beautifully maintained.  The park was what lay between me and my destination and on this particular Friday, contained exactly two people:  a man on a bike, presumably without a home, who had a penchant for collecting cans, and another man, who was very far from home, and looked an awful lot like me.

     

   

After a brisk ride, and a brief stop on a bench to snap a couple photos and enjoy the salt air of the Ocean, I managed to get to the other side of the park, and found myself face to face with a rarely bland facade of what turned out to be the Italia Mura.  I was rather fond of the palm trees that were planted in rows, and they made me feel like I was back in San Diego again.

My next question was whether or not it was abandoned.  The parking lot outside the building seemed rather empty, save for a few cars, and it certainly didn't have the bustling feel of a place in use.  However, it was by no means in great disrepair, as it looked like the vegetation had been regularly groomed, and the main building kept pristine.  So it still existed, but in what capacity?  I'm not sure I ever found this out.  The main area of the Italia Mura had about five people in it, and they all had the air of maintenance me, carrying tools and ladders.  When I tried to park my bike close to the center, the man with the ladder actually said to me quite loudly 'Not!"

As for why it is called Italia Mura, and whether or not it is the Jersey shore of Nagoya, to those questions I can provide more definitive answers.  As for it being the Jersey Shore, that is a solid and definitive no.  This place had about as many Italians as it did French people, and about five times the number of Japanese to Canadians at that.  

As to why it's named Italia Mura, I guess it translates to something along the lines of 'The walls of Italy" and as said earlier in this post, the mall is supposed to be recreation of some of Italy's finer sights.    However, because of the whole abandoned feel of the place, and the absence of any people, the whole Italia Mura embodied this feeling of post-war 1940's sadness.  Besides a small field close to the area where some retired locals laughed and played weird golf, the whole Mura took on an atmosphere of forgotten tragedy and abandonment.  

So ends my adventure to the Italia Mura, and with it I call this challenge a success.  I do really wonder what will become of this place, as it has this latent beauty that sits untapped next to one of the nicest areas of Nagoya.  The port is a beautifully designed area of the city, and this part of its history and development is wasted and forgotten.  I take heart in the presence of the maintenance people, and hope they are working towards something great.

Thanks for reading, and as a bonus I will give an extra picture of a restaurant I saw while biking home from the coast.    

Much love,

Sean

Shift.

I'm lying in my bed.  It is a rainy, spring night, fourteen stories above a highway of tracks.  Trains rumble by subtly.  The noise is soothing and rhythmic.  It is expected, and in that way comforting.  When a distractive noise becomes a constant, its absence is the bother.  The air is sweet and cool, with a hint of fragrance.  It smells like warm things to come, an Ocean not far, and that crisp odour of a rain not long past.  Wind blows through the partly opened window, the cross breeze created by the slightly ajar balcony door.  It is late, too late to hear the goings on of anyone's daily life.  Yet in that void creeps the night noises of a city in slumber.  The lone car drives quickly down an empty street, accelerating loudly.  A drunken couple talks nonsense, stumbling home to their empty, waiting beds.  And amidst it all, the ever constant, a train rumbles by softly.

Shift.

I am sitting in front of a large glass tank.  Inside the transparent walls, exists an artificial world made of real creatures.  They swim by methodically.  They swim by rhythmically.  They swim by with out a glance, or a thought, or a care.  A turtle makes a wide circle, it's path the span of the tank, not a inch of circumference wasted.  The fish are more erratic.  They swim faster, they change direction more often, they are less and less consistent in a way proportionate to their size.  The smallest abandoned the notion of a circle outright, and swarm in tight lines.  Back and forth.  Back and forth.  A shark swims in a disjointed way.  Diagonally, slightly up with a list to the left.  The little fish don't like this.  Back and forth.  I picture the tank from above.  I am looking down on a city, everyone with a path.  Who makes the wide arcs of a turtle?  Which of you is the back and forth of the tiny frightened fish?   Who will claim the title of the listing shark?  They're not that much different then people.  Then I walk away, and realize that at least I can walk away.

Shift.

I am in a dimly lit bar, surrounded by smokey vapours and that comforting smell of old bottles.  My company is little, but diverse.  An androgynous, mouth breather straddles the bar cautiously.  Next to her sits a sack of a women idly pulling on a lit cigarette.  They are both playing audience to a thin, reedy, caricature of a bartender, who gives me the last dregs of the Kirin at a hit to his wallet.  The bar is small, and in that way lovely.  There are no surprises behind corners, and no corners to be surprised around.  It is a tiny bar on its surface, and deeper than most in other ways.  I sit in a thick leather chair and open my book.  I drink slowly.  I am the absence of urgency.  The bartender looks at me reluctantly, imploringly; an alien reading a book is bad for the night life.

Shift

I am in a train car, enveloped in the noise of a language unintelligible, or maybe misunderstood.  A man sleeps by my right shoulder restlessly.  I am poked and prodded by the jerking fits of an active napper.  Smoke and perfume is in the air, cigarettes and the mask of something sweeter; fake and manufactured.  It half works and creates something less than the sum of its parts, not as intoxicating to me as either scent alone.  I suck on an empty beer can and its empty insides gurgle sullenly.  The drink isn't a crutch or a release, but a luxury allowed in a country not my own.  I lose myself in the noise again.  I recognize the tones of normal conversation: anger, joy and urgency among them, yet the sounds hold no weight.  I touch lightly upon moments of understanding.  I catch words and phrases like I'm eavesdropping through a thin wall; the sound is muffled.  It slips away swiftly, my comprehension, and I am alone again in a sea of people.  Alone in the least lonely way possible.

Shift, I am in a classroom, I am in a busy train station, I am in a coffee shop draining the last of my drink.  Bottoms up.  The scenery flickers, and I am the static visitor to this world's many vistas.  The extreme constant.  The world is my moving picture show, and it comes to me.

I hope you liked that.  I kept everyone waiting long enough that I figured I should write something beyond the standard 'been here, seen that' regurgitation.  Good things come to those that wait.  In answer to your questions, yes these are all real scenarios that I have experienced in the past few weeks, and I just took the liberty of adding a little dash of artistic license.  I'm not even sure how you sit at a bar cautiously, but my word that lady was doing it.

I went to the aquarium last Friday, and it was an aquarium.  I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I don't think I've ever been to a real one before.  I really do like zoos and things of the like, but the general impression I got from Nagoya Aquarium was 'sad'.  I spent a lot of time sitting creepily in the back of dark rooms watching things swim in circles.  Sometimes I enjoy going places with others, but something about my rainy Friday solo trip to the aquarium was positively haunting.  I can be alone.

The bar is a tiny thing just minutes from my house.  It boasts a dense, smokey, atmosphere, and sports a crowd of people that often come off manic or manic depressive.  They never pursue conversation with me, and there are rarely more than two patrons at a time.  I like this.  It is obscurely located down a side street, and I find the little nook absolutely charming.  Quaintness, but not in a lame way.

Train rides are exactly as I described them, I just don't always have a beer.  The first paragraph is every night from my room since I started leaving my window open, give or take the rain.  I could always hear the trains, but they were a rattling, distant thunder before, instead of the distinct rolling melody I hear now.  I have also gained those other nuances of the night - the traffic, the inebriated, and I desperately wish for crickets.

I'm in the full swing of teaching time now.  There are children.  They hug me, and bother me and make me smile.  I like some of them more than most, and I like all of them more than I honestly expected.  They're children, and I can't get mad at them for being so.  I get more annoyed at adults who pay for conversation classes and then don't speak.

I am content.  I am busy, but I am not wishing to be elsewhere.  I'm not rushed to live my life.  Sometimes the easiest way to adapt to a new situation is to be completely absolute of self.  Then after a little ado, the situation finds itself forced to bend around you.  Knowing who you are in every possibility is the ultimate flexibility.

However, being who you are in every possibility is the ultimate challenge.

Thanks for reading,

Much Love,

Sean
      

I'm Big in Small Circles

So here's a funny piece of news: I've inadvertently achieved internet fame!  As part of the gap schedule set up that the company is rolling over the next couple weeks, I'm on the school tour as an All-Star substitute.  The awesome school director of today's location, Joy, kindly asked me for my photograph, and who am I to say no?  I had no idea that I was going to hit front page on the Konomiya website though!

http://www.ecc.jp/school/chubu_area/konomiya/konomiya.php

I think that qualifies as a successful day on the job.  The funniest part is that I am fairly confident that this school is not on my schedule for the school year starting in April, and I just sincerely hope students don't check the website and come out specifically for that handsome guy in the top row, second from the left.  I'm such a heartbreaker.

Thanks for reading,

Much love,

Sean

The Japanese Live Here

The last time I spoke with my family, my Dad asked me a very simple question:  What is the most striking difference between Japan and home?  Now it might have been the residual jet lag, or the fact that I was trying to absorb and process every cultural difference all at once, but the long and short of it is that I came up blank.

It feels like it should be an easy question.  Japan finds itself on the forefront of new technology and design; it has a long and rich cultural background that weaves itself into every facet of its society; and exhibits a social group dynamic that is quite different than that of North America.  With all this is mind, it may sound weird when I say that the answer is none of these; instead it is the most simple and common sense thing that I find the most striking difference from Canada.  Japan is home to the Japanese.

Take a walk through the Yorkdale Mall in Toronto on a weekend and tell me what makes someone a Canadian.  What one thing, what one common physical trait makes someone easily identifiable as a Canadian citizen?  Canada has such a rich blend of ethnicity, that to try and pick a background or an identity to bind us as a Nation is virtually impossible.  There is a pride in our country, a mutual satisfaction in calling it our home, but where we come from and why we live the lives we do could not be more diverse.

I don't want this to sound like I'm surprised to find Japanese people in Japan.  I'm not an idiot, and I knew what to expect.  I am aware that Japan has had a history of being exclusionary and pesky to foreigners, just ask amnesty international.  Yet think of how much I stand out here, and then drop a Japanese man in Union Station and ask yourself who turns their head.

I hope I don't give off the impression of complaining, as I simply meant this more as an observation than anything else.  If Canada is a mosaic of all sorts of cultural threads, then Japan is a tapestry of a much more singular origin.  Yet as I have spent increasing amounts of time observing and watching people, I have come to realize that to be Japanese is to be apart of a look just as diverse as any other people on the planet.  From diversity they achieve unity.  I love it.

I've really enjoyed my time here so far, and am starting to feel comfortable with my more immediate surroundings.  Moving around the world is, I assume, never easy, and I don't believe it is weird for me to miss my family, friends and fuzzy dogs considerably.  Yet, in the grand scheme of things, my transition to Japan probably could not have gone any smoother.  Within the past couple days I have started to return to my apartment with a feeling of home, and that comforts me.

Day three of training starts tomorrow, and just as the first two days tended to be more administrative in nature, the following days should be more hands on and demonstrative.  Everyone I have met from the company has proven to be rather upbeat and positive in the way they go about their job, and more importantly in the way they talk about ECC as an employer.

Wish me luck in the days ahead,

Love you family!    

Thanks for reading,

Sean
 

The Sum of the Parts

As I sit here typing, it is late summer, a beautiful night, and the eve before yet another week of work. When put like so, nothing seems paticularily out of place, or different from many of the Sunday nights of weeks previous. And, for all intensive purposes, you're right - it's not much different then many others. However, for me, it is slightly different; I'll tell you why.

I suppose the main difference for me is that I'm a little more tired than I would usually find myself at the end of a weekend. As I have mentioned before, my typical quanitiy of sleep during the Monday to Friday haul is relatively low. That said, I am often limping into the weekends, with Saturday and Sunday in the plans as days to fill the tanks, unwind, and prepare for the next 5 day span. I guarentee this isn't unique to me, but maybe you're an exception. The point of my digression is this: I was unable to get the amount of sleep I would normaly log on a weekend.

Yesterday marked the beginning of my 60 hour TESL course (Teaching English as a Second Language), that is held on weekends at WLU. It is a bit of a whirlwind trip of a course, running for three consecutive weekends on both the Saturday and Sunday for 9 hours at a time.

Now if I recall back to the few times I made the mistake of signing up for night lectures at University, I remember that sitting in class and paying attention for a period of even three hours was a grind. It was suprisingly exhaustive to sit in a dull, boring anthropology or history elective for three hours and pay attention. Therefore, you can imagine that multiplying that class time three fold and starting it at 9 in the morning is quite draining.

However, this was even more tiring, because I wasn't bored, I was engaged. You'd be suprised how much more wiped you are after a class where you are actively discussing and involved. Being bored may cause drowsiness, but actively thinking and speaking for extensive periods will make you tired.

Now at first glance this course seemed pretty short, even to me. I even remember questioning how much I could really learn in such a little span of time. Yet, when I do the math, 60 hours is equivalent to (you guessed it) sixty of the normal hour lectures you would take in university. If you figured about three lectures a week at an hour each, that would be 20 weeks of classes. Case in point, it is like taking a full semester course in the span of six days, without as much time to process it.

The course, as best I can explain it, is essentially all the basics of what is teacher's college thrust into a single class. The start is theory, moving into practical teaching application and followed by hands on opportunities to apply what has been learned in a presentation format. One of the suprising things about the content being learned is that it is really a lot of common sense - yet things we never take the time to think about.

The instructor, by most means isn't out of the ordinary in any regard. Friendly, smart, and well spoken, nothing on first glance would set her apart from many other teachers her age. And yet, I think what makes her stand out so prominently is that she is the first teacher I've talked to that has ever made the process of educating others seem so potentially overwhelming.

No, she never once said teaching was hard. The opposite is actually true, and she made the point of saying that one can auto pilot a course with very little inguenuity and still most likely get a contract renewal. This by no means will make you an effective teacher, or help your students retain a lot of what you present, but it can earn you a consistent pay cheque.

Yet, the way in which she talks about her teaching history is almost palpable. You can imagine every ingenious solution she had to what seems like a otherwise stymying dilemma. To reiterate, she never presents it in a way to be daunting, but what IS daunting about it is to imagine if you could have come to the same solution in a similar situation. Am I intuitive and creative enough to understand when a specific child is not learning on par with the other children, and then adapt and alter my educating methods to better incorporate that learning style? I know now, after two days, that I was by no means ready to teach in Japan if I had recieved a job. I'm lucky to know this. Luckier still are the Japanese kids I could have potentially taught.

As an aside, I am aware that at some point in her career she must have experienced a learning curve. Furthermore, as both an instructor for a teaching course, as well as a teacher in practice, the theory and ideas are always fresh and present to her now - which I can only assume is very advantageous. And after eight years of teaching consistently, it would be strange to me if she DIDN'T talk with confidence and experience. I have to remember that it's a gradual process.

When I think of the first two days of learning, the first thing that comes to my mind is the idiom "you can't see the forest through the trees". Although this idiom actually puts a negative connotation on paying to much attention to the parts and therefore missing the whole; it comes to mind because I feel like a teacher can only really effectively teach a class by focusing on the individual needs, and not the group as a whole. One really MUST see the forest for the trees if they want to teach, otherwise the needs of the few will be drowned out by the needs of the majority.

The 'new' theory in teaching is that of multiple intelligences. Essentially, different kids learn differently. Now as we were told when learning it, it seems to silly to think that this really is a new theory in any way. How does this not seem like common sense? Yet, how many classes in elementary and high school do you remember sitting through where a teacher dictated information while you sat and tried to absorb? This is great for the auditory learners (which fortunately for me I am), but is a tough way to learn when you need to be hands on or visual.

Now think about every kid in these classes that would fidget, be distractive and always do bad on tests and assignments. If you were like me, you'd assume they were dumb. I was a jerk. Yet, take that same fidgety kid and make him play a sport in gym class and all of the sudden he may excel. The point: being athleticly capabale is a type of intellegence. There are so many examples. So how can an academic course be altered to better incorporate the needs of someone who best learns actively and hands on? I can't give you a good answer on this yet, but I definitely excited to continue to explore the possible answers.

I guess the best summary to what I learned in the theory portion of this course is that every kid is intellegent, the distinction is on how are they intellegent. There are no bad kids, just bad teachers. I so desperately don't want to be a bad teacher.

As of right now, as I eluded to, I am slightly overwhelmed. I'm not afraid to try and teach, and excited for the chance, but it certainly can be daunting. Who doesn't want to emulate that favourite teacher they had as a kid. I want to be like that one teacher you had that is engaging and makes the students enjoy class, and just maybe I'll get my chance sooner than later.

Much Love

Sean

Improving

When I put the year in review, it is fair to say that anyone that had any contact with me from about late February to mid May had some idea that I had applied to a teaching job in Japan. Whether that contact was first hand, or you heard it from somebody else or were just bombarded with facebook status while going about your day - the point is that I was vocal about it.

So, of those that actually cared, it may have been strange come the end of May and beginning of June, when all of the sudden it was no longer a topic of discussion - and the results of my months of interviewing never came to light. At this point it is pretty easy to put one and one together. It equals two. I didn't get the job.

It is an interesting thing to experience when the culmination of months of focus on an objective brings no resolve. I spent three months focused on one goal, only to have it turn out to be for not. I'm not bitter, but it really was an interesting experience. It felt like the floor had been taken out from under me, and I was just floating. Directionless.

I wonder what it feels like to accomplish a life long goal? I'm sure there is happiness in success - but to some small extent there must be a hole where before there was purpose.

There are several ways that you can react to this, I found out, and I think I went through them all in turn. The first, and most obvious, is to sulk. Here I was, rejected, and now had to go back and tell all the people I had it hyped to, that I had failed. That isn't easy, nor is it fun. Sulking isn't something I'm good at though, and as a consequence that phase didn't last too long. By nature I can be a bit of a brooder, pessimistic at times, and at other times openly cynical and sarcastic - but generally content to exist.

The second reaction was to try and patch the hole that had formed. When you spend every day waking up, antcipating what it will be like when you finally accomplish your objective - there forms this almost purpose driven quality to your life. Everything else you do day to day (good or bad) becomes almost irrelevant, as you are so future oriented. Then, all of the sudden the day to day was all I had again. There was no big thing on the horizon, the here and now took precident. Therefore, much like when I returned from South America, I began to cast around for something to focus my energies on - leading to the third reaction to rejection: what can I do differently?

I was forced to ask myself the question "Why the hell didn't I get it, and what can I do to make sure I don't fail again?" This, I guess is where I'm just starting to get into. Although I'm still waiting to hear back about volunteering in Africa, and have set all these goals for myself down the road - there is a part of me that wants to assess what went wrong, not simply move 0n to something else. And to be really honest, I think there were better qualified applicants. That is what went wrong.

That said, I did get VERY close to landing the position. As an idea of how close I got, they were so on the fence about me that it took them an extra two weeks to reply after my interview. Of all their recruiting stations in North America, I was one of about an average of two a year that ever gets called back for a second interview. Second interviews are not really a good thing, but it did mean they weren't ready to give up on me. So I was close, but still failed. How can I tip the scale for next time?

Short answer: self improvement.

In one of the most competitive ESL countries to teach in, I was a hair short of good enough. Therefore I think now is the time to take it upon myself to improve. They weren't wrong, I'm not a teacher. I'm a biology grad, and have very limited teaching experience. But, there is always hope!

As of this fall I believe I will enroll myself in a TESL course. It is happening in Waterloo come September, and takes place on weekends. These courses go over the basics of not only how to make English easier to teach as a second language and classroom dynamics when working with kids, but also application processes, interviewing techniques, cultural insights as well as supplying resources. Fantastic.

Pros: Teaching experience, looks good on a resume, one of the first things looked for during most ESL applications, close to home, accesible times, offer job finding support.

Cons: Expensive

As I see it, regardless of the price tag the course is worth it. Three Saturday and Sundays in a row for about 10 hours a day and the course is complete.

I don't expect the completion of this course to override any of my other existing goals though. I view it as a tac on to my personal aresenal that will let me have the experiences I seem to be craving these days. I still want to do everything on my short list, but this sounds like an excellent tool in helping me accomplish that goal - and maybe even direct me to doing something I might enjoy as more than a passing thing.

On a funny note, if the course doesn't get you a job within six months of taking it they offer a full refund! Oh, but wait, there are strings attached. To recieve a full refund you are required to supply twenty rejection letters from schools around the world, and excessive detail on each one(what colour is the principals tie?). Along with handing in the letters, you then have to return all your texbooks, course materials and... course completion certificate? Yep, they make you give back your course certificate! Essentially making it seem like you never took the course at all! Although, I will say that if you go 0/20, maybe you're barking down the wrong career path.

Then, after all that, you can have your full refund (minus a $95 administration fee!).

It is nice to feel like I'm taking steps in the right direction, even if I'm not completely sure I am.

much love,

Sean