Annoyed in Korea: A Rant

As you have probably concluded from my previous blog posts, there are some big cultural differences between the U.S. and Korea.  Some are mild or subtle, such as the way in which one should grab things from another person (with your right hand and your left "assisting" it).  Some are a little more obvious and significant, like the fact that children live with their family until they are married.  And some are just plain annoying and sometimes almost unbearable.  I have recently experienced this last one.  Let me tell you about it.

Almost any native English teacher in a public school will tell you about the way in which Koreans go about giving information.  This being, at the very last moment possible.  Let me give you an example:  My coworkers will let me know about a dinner that I'm "invited" to at 3:30 p.m. on a Friday when the dinner is that same Friday at 4:30 p.m.  You will not be permitted to leave work early since your day ends at 4:30.  No.  You will go straight from work to the dinner. The reason I say "invited" is because you really have no choice in the matter at all.  You are expected to be at the dinner and if you decide not to go, you might be thought of unfavorably for the 11 months left in your contract.  Maybe you won't ever get invited to another dinner because they think you don't want to go.  If you have plans already, which I believe many native teachers do on a Friday night, you better postpone, or better yet, cancel them.  You will probably be expected to go to the norae bang after dinner and we teachers know that could last into the wee hours of the morning.  These dinners usually happen about once every 2 months or more frequently.  You will rarely be told before the actual day of the dinner.  I have gotten so used to this I can actually predict with great precision when I will have a school dinner.  Last Friday I literally woke up and felt in my body the announcement of a school dinner.  During my hours of free time at work I even told people on Facebook chat that I thought there was going to be a school dinner.  Sure enough.  Come 3:00 my coteacher gets a phone call, hangs up, turns to me and says in an apologetic tone because she knows that I don't like it, "Kelly, I'm really sorry for short notice but we will have school dinner tonight.  We will leave 3:20 and go hiking then we have dinner."  I say, "Hmm I only have sandals because I didn't know we were going hiking.  Can I go home and change my shoes?"  "No.  We go straight to hiking."  Perfect.  I predicted the school dinner but we've never gone hiking before.  My psychic abilities are not yet at that level.  Maybe if I stay another year...Hell no.  I discovered after we left to go "hiking" that we were actually just going to walk around some botanical gardens for 30 minutes so my feet were fine.  We went to dinner and I was lucky to get out semi-early because my principal apparently didn't feel like getting shit-faced that night.  I arrived only an hour late back to my apartment where an out of town guest was waiting for me.

This could be thought of as a pretty insignificant example of Korean tell-you-everything-at-the-last-moment-ism that one could easily get over with a little bit of cultural sensitivity and a laid back, go-with-the-flow sort of attitude.  Okay.  Maybe you're right.  But there's more.

Class changes are also told to you with very little time to do anything about it.  Sometimes it's cool because you will get to school thinking you're about to face 6 classes of disrespectful little shits and at 9:05 you will ask your coteacher where the class is.  She will say to you, "Oh, we have no class today because of test*."  You will suddenly become excited, and immediately update your facebook status to "It's Thursday and all my classes are cancelled!  Just one more day, then it's Friday!"  Though that status won't have any capitalized words or apostrophes and will be decorated by 10 exclamation marks.  You will sit at your desk bored as hell, caught up on all your reality T.V. shows and realize that maybe it wasn't so great all your classes were cancelled again.

It could be worse though and you could be told 5 minutes before the lesson you planned yesterday that in fact, you are skipping the lesson you planned and will be teaching the following one.  The one you will be teaching you haven't planned anything for, or even looked at, since you didn't think you would be teaching it until Monday.  You'll just have to wing it and it's your fault if you don't fill up your 20 minutes of class.

There are many combinations of class changes that one must endure.  These include the "All Classes Cancelled," the "Change of Lesson" the "Change of Period," the "Change of Day," the "I Don't Know What Day It Will Change To But I Will Tell You Later" (she definitely won't), the "Extra Classes Today," and the "I Don't Know Where The Class Is, Maybe They Aren't Coming And I Can't Get A Hold Of The Homeroom Teacher."  All of them are quite annoying and you never seem to get used to it.

I'd heard various horror stories from waygooks about their Winter Camp woes: the problems that they had faced with their coteachers, school administration, etc. when they were preparing for and teaching Winter Camp.  Kimchi Dreadlocks, without any guidelines or restrictions from his coteacher or anyone above her, was given less than two weeks to plan out an entire 40 individual lesson plans.  Then, the night before the first day of camp, his coteacher informed him that the lessons had not been approved by the education office and that he couldn't teach them.  She had spent all weekend trying to figure out what to do but didn't have time to change everything.  He would go to school the next day without any idea of what he was going to teach and his coteacher threw at him a bunch of material he hadn't even looked at and expected him to teach it.

Compared to many people I talked to, my Winter Camp was a piece of cake.  I really had no complaints about how my school went about it.  Today was my Winter Camp.

I was sitting at my desk at about 3:00 counting down the minutes until I could go home when my coteacher gets a phone call.  I know it's not going to be a surprise school dinner: one, because we had one on Friday and two, because I didn't get the tingly feeling.  She turns to me and says my name.  "Kelly?"  I take out my ear buds and my coteacher says to me "Vice Principal wants you to type all your lesson plans for Special Classes."  These "Special Classes" she is referring to are the 4 classes (one of each grade level) I teach by myself, without a coteacher.  Each class has around 10 students and I come up with the lessons without any sort of reference material.  Pretty much off the top of my head and the help of the inter web.  Because I don't have any books or anything from where to get my materials, each lesson takes me a pretty long time to plan.  I would say they take a good 1-2 hours each, depending on what materials I will use (ppts, worksheets, surveys, games etc.)  I really pride myself on these lessons.  Because I don't have to use the shitty government textbooks and have free reign, I can get creative.  I think the students really enjoy my lessons.  Enough about how awesome I am...  So the VP wants me to type up all the lessons.  Alright, this is doable.  I will just have to go through all of them and separate this semester's lessons from last's.  It will take some time because there is a big pile and they are all mixed up but I can definitely have this done by the time I leave work this afternoon.  Then my coteacher tells me that not only does the VP want the lessons I have already done, but she wants ALL the lessons for the entire semester.  I am outraged.  I have never before been told that I was supposed to have the lessons planned for the rest of the semester planned and written out.  I write my lessons the day before and they turn out awesome.  It takes a lot of time to plan a lesson when you have no guidelines, textbook or anything to go off of.  I didn't have to turn anything in last semester so how would I know?  So I'm going through and calculating the number of lessons I am supposed to have planned. The total comes to 34 more lessons.  This could take me up to 68 hours of planning time!  I tell my coteacher in a half panicked half angry voice that this is going to take me a really long time.  That I was never told about this in advance and I don't know how long it will take me.  She asks me, "Can you have done tomorrow?"  I about shit my pants.  Are you kidding me?  I tell her I have 6 classes tomorrow which leaves me with 2 hours.  I tell her no, that it's impossible.  Maybe I can have it done Friday since all my classes have been cancelled for a field trip*.  My coteacher does not seem to think that this is okay.  She keeps asking me if I'm sure I will not be able to have it done by tomorrow.  I tell her yes, I am sure.  I panic a little bit and get to work, hoping that I will even be able to have it all done by Friday.

The next day I come into work a little fearful and work on the lesson plans in every spare minute I have.  Like I said, I have six classes and not much time to accomplish anything significant.  Luckily my 6th graders are taking tests all class so I work on it a bit during this time.  In the middle of class my coteacher gets up from her chair, walks over to me, and asks me to pull up my lesson plans.  I tell her that I have all the 3rd grade lessons done but have about 18 more lessons amongst the other three grades.  She immediately takes the mouse from me and starts copy and pasting lessons from 6th grade into 5th grade, 4th into 3rd and any combination you can statistically calculate, to fill up the blank spaces.  She gives a little chuckle and says, "We have no time."  After all this I have 2 more lessons to come up with, which I pull out of my ass.  Apparently the quality of the work has no importance whatsoever.  She says "thank you" and looks relieved to have it done.  I am excited that I won't be working on this for the next two days but also a bit embarrassed about turning in something so crappy.  I get over it.  I sit there wondering, "Why did they tell me at the very last moment about something apparently so important?  Why didn't my coteacher tell the VP that the task she was asking of me was impossible?  These have to do with an aspect of Korean culture that I just can't seem to get used to.

In Korean culture it is usually unacceptable for one to question an older person or one of higher authority.  This is true in schools and I'm guessing it is very similar elsewhere.  In this case the VP told my coteacher at the last minute that she wanted me to get this huge quantity of work done in a very short period of time.  Since my coteacher is very young and the VP is in a position of authority, my coteacher does not have the right to question the VP.  She can not say that this will be very difficult to accomplish because it is almost physically impossible.  She has to say "yes", act like nothing is wrong and get the work done.  If it means staying up all night long to finish it, so be it.  Well, I'm not Korean and I'm not going to stand for it.  I understand respect.  But this is just ridiculous. I tell my coteacher that if she wants I will go to the VP and tell her exactly how I feel.  Since my coteacher will have to translate she doesn't want to do this.  She doesn't want to even be associated with the situation.  I tell her I'll have it done by Friday.  If the VP has a problem with that she can take it up with me.  I have no issues with speaking out for justice.  I mean, we all know what happens when an oppressed group of people does nothing to stop an power hungry dictator from taking over the world....okay, taking it too far.  In the U.S. we are taught to be assertive, speak our minds thoughtfully and articulately and to stand up to authority when we believe the person in power is really wrong or if she is asking us to complete an impossible feat.  Like I said before, I can't get used to the Korean way and don't think I ever will.

After lunch I ask my coteacher what the typed lesson plans would be used for.  She tells me that the school gets "bonus points" from the office of education for turning in extra things like this.  I guess it doesn't matter what content is on the paper, just that there is a paper.  Then I ask her why the VP needed it so quickly.  She says that it was due today.  I was given the assignment on Tuesday and the deadline to turn it in was on Wednesday.  Seriously?  She must have known about this for awhile now if it's a request from the office of education.  Did it slip her mind until the day before it was due?  I highly doubt it.

My point is:

1. I am sick of being told things at the last possible moment.
2. I know this submissiveness is deeply rooted in Korean history and Confucianism and I've tried to be culturally sensitive in regards to it but I still really hate it and don't want to be a part of it.  It's just not me.

It also doesn't help that all of this comes at a time when I am pretty ready to leave Korea.  I'm getting a little bit homesick and am easily annoyed by even the littlest of things.

Anyways, that was my rant.  I had to get it off my chest. 

Peace 

*Replace "test" with almost any noun (ex. field trip, Sports Day practice, yellow dust, kimchi deficit)  and this has probably occurred.
*The field trip was supposed to be last Friday but on Thursday I was told classes were not cancelled anymore.  Today (Tuesday) I was told that this Friday classes will be cancelled.  We'll see what happens on Friday.