Caveat: It’s biznis

I suppose I had to have a bad day, eventually.  I felt discouraged.  I will say that today, then, was the official ending of my "new job honeymoon" at Karma Academy.  My frustration was on two fronts, one general and one specific, which are basically linked.  Neither of them is novel in the least – I can almost guarantee I've ranted similarly before, probably on more than one occasion.

First, the general:  I'm struggling more and more with a feeling of unclear or vague expectations, vis-a-vis what sort of teaching I should be doing, what I should be working on, what I might be doing right or wrong, etc.  Koreans almost never tell you "how you're doing" – until there's some crisis or some problem.  I've been feeling guilty, too, because of the inevitable double standard that emerges whenever you have "native speaker" and local Korean teachers working side-by-side – we are inevitably, because of our different proficiencies and distinct market values, held to different levels of expectation.  This always makes me feel like I'm exploiting some kind of peculiar affirmative action program, inappropriately.

So the second thing is that today, there was not a major crisis, but a minor complaint from a parent that then got blown out of proportion in my mind.  Hagwon parents are so hard to please, of course.  One parent complains of not enough homework, and another complains of too much.  How can one respond?  Often what happens is that you give lots of homework, and there's a kind behind-the-scenes understanding that not all the kids are being held to the same standard, as driven by parental expectations or requirements.  The conversation goes: "Oh, that kid … his mom doesn't want him doing so much homework, so don't worry if he doesn't pass the quiz, just let it go."  This grates against my egalitarian impulses, on one level, and on another, despite being sympathetic to it, I end up deeply annoyed with how it gets implemented on the day-to-day: no one ever tells ME these things until some parent gets mad because I never got told, before, about the special case that their kid represents.  In the longest run, of course, in the hagwon biz, one must never forget who the paying customers are – it's the parents.  And for each parent that is pleased that their kid is coming home and saying "hagwon was fun today," there's another that takes that exact same report from her or his kid as a strong indicator that someone at the hagwon isn't doing his or her job.  So it boils down to this:  happy hagwon students don't necessarily mean happy hagwon customers.  As a teacher, you're always walking a tightrope: which kids are supposed to be happy, and which are supposed to be miserable?  Don't lose track – it's critical to the success of the business.

I came home feeling increasingly grumpy, and went on my 3km jog, feeling fat and old and slovenly and inept at my career.  The humidity is high, the night felt hardly chilly at all.  Now I'm eating an ascetic dinner of rice and kimchi, and drinking cold corn-tassel tea.  I'm churning mostly fruitless "if I ran the hagwon" fantasies in my head.