December 12th, 2021

As this year is drawing to a close, I’ve come to think about a lot of things, and my place amongst them.

I’ve been living in Korea now for two and a half years, and I’m not as naive as I was when I first got here. I feel like now I know a bit more and understand a bit more, but I also feel like I’m still vulnerable to being manipulated by the workplace.

I work at a Hagwon, so being put between a rock and a hard place is basically the norm. Working ridiculous hours, and then expected to work overtime without pay regularly (once or twice a month at a minimum) also seems to be the going rate for my current hagwon, too.

I’m not entirely even certain why I wanted to make this blog post. I actually have a super long blog post just saved in my drafts. This post probably wont ever get published, but, it’s a really long post about me ranting about my workplace.

But, finally, after 15 long weeks, in two weeks, I will get a vacation. My hagwon took all our red days, so we haven’t had a day off since September. In amongst all that time, we’ve also had to plan and run 3 activities, write 22 report cards, (all of which are 1-2 pages of writing) and had an open class where there was so much pressure for us to perform, and my supervisor is such a bitch that she made me cry over it.

Honestly, I think some of these things would have been more understanable and achieveable if we weren’t under so much stress and put under such scrutiny that even the tiniest mistake.

Honestly, my job at my school now would be so much nicer if some of the staff weren’t there, but I guess that’s the same for every job.

Anyways, for this blog, at this current moment in time, I’m considering just blogging my experiences. I feel like I just need a place to vent.

Hopefully this can become a weekly thing, but who knows. Soon, I will have a break and I might not feel so negatively about things.

For now, I think I’ve put my thoughts into a confusing mess, and next time I’ll try and be more cohesive in my thoughts. I might separate my ideas into like their own blog posts and go from there.

But, weekly posts! Let’s try and make something of this blog, right? It’s juist sitting here otherwise….