6. Orientation

Let me introduce you to this fallacy that orientation is your savior. Orientation is a social vacation where a bunch of western people get crammed together to: listen to really boring Korean people speak, learn absolutely nothing, realize that a lot of people have the same exact complaints that you do, be told that the ambiguities in your contract allow the employer to do whatever they want, listen to some people that love their job (relatively rare among the masses), be pacified and told that it’s better to just adjust (submit) than try to fight the machine, and realize that Korea has hired a bunch of weirdoes because that’s all they can attract.

It’s more of like an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Hi, my name is Frank, I’ve been here for one year, and this is how I’m dealing with it… I feel like the only thing it lacked was a drill sergeant saying that we signed on the dotted line and now we’re government property.

The atypical Korean speaker from any educational program in Korea or the Ministry of Education (MOE) – the reader of slides full of words verbatim, in a monotone voice, no pictures or different colors, no interaction whatsoever, I was happier that they were finished; I think elementary school kids could do better presentations... power point has like one million functions how can you not know at least a few of them as a person that uses it.

Also, this school might now try to prevent you from going since they seem to think that orientation turned me “wild.” It wasn’t really it at all, but they can believe what they want. Ever since I got to Korea, I realized that the contract was a lie, the Korean co-teachers know, do nothing and lie, Korea people and parents don’t know or care what you teach, and 90+% of the students don’t care about learning English. Orientation was a small addition in coming to a full realization of how moronic the whole system is set up. So, if anything, orientation didn’t make me a disgruntled person, it was the ever-constant stupidity that I faced on a daily basis.