A number of people have messaged me or sent emails: "Jared, what's the job situation?"
So, here's a summary, so I don't have to tell everyone: I didn't get the job I was hoping to get, but I knew it wasn't a "done deal" when I came here, so I had contingency plans.
Plan B is that I'm now looking for a job in Korea. But, I'm not in a hurry. Most (or very many) jobs start in March, since that's when the new school year starts for Korean kids. And I'm prefectly OK with waiting until then. I will take my time looking, and be picky about what I can find, at least for now. If March gets close and still nothing, I'll get less picky. I've actually already rejected one offer – it looked way too much like another LBridge in terms of excessive hours and unnecessary staff-room rules.
What I'm doing, instead, is trying to work on the Korean thing. I'm really bad at learning languages – I know all of you think, "oh, Jared, he's studied linguistics, he's studied all these languages, he's so good at it." Well, just to be clear… that last concept doesn't necessarily follow, logically, from the previous ones. So, it's a struggle. I look up the same word dozens of times in my dictionary. It goes on my flash cards. And still, I hear it and wonder, "now, what the hell did that mean, again?" Just yesterday I heard 모든 and thought, "I looked that up about 30 minutes ago. What did it mean?" I recognize that I should know a word, but not always know what it means.
Anyway, because of that, and because of my "Motivational Deficit Disorder" that I sometimes struggle with, starting around Feb. 1st I'm enrolling in a full-time "Korean Language Hagwon for Foreigners." I think it will help structure my time, and give me opportunities to practice Korean with Koreans who will be patient and scrupulous with me, because they're being paid to be.
So, in fact, because that's a month-long commitment, I don't actually want a job before March 1st, at this point. And that's fine. It will give me time, hopefully, to find something that works well for me. I'm looking at "after school at public school"-type positions, right now. They're the latest thing, where, essentially, public schools are elbowing in on the traditional private hagwon market by offering their own higher-level supplemental coursework in the afternoons.