ESL Escape Hatch
Written September 7, 2005

For the consummate Arts student, poverty is a way of life. While you’re encased in this cushy university bubble, you can survive on smiles and Ramen noodles. You can squeeze delicious juices of self-righteousness out of your zealous criticisms of Big Capitalism and its dubious ethics. But sooner or later, you’re outta here, into the real world where Big Capitalism is waiting to exact its calculated revenge. It doesn’t want cynical, dissenting Philosophy majors (like you) to become unpredictable cogs in its machinery. The Big C wants you on the fringes, the outside, where it can chew you up at its leisure. Put simply: no corner office for you. No job.

Now, before you start counting boxes of empties in the garage, desperately weighing them against your ballooning student loan, know that you do have options after graduation. You can go to college! Or grad school! Or… or…

Or ESL. For the open-minded, teaching English abroad is rapidly becoming the escape hatch of champions. Snowballing numbers of students are vanishing overseas to pay off debts, fulfil schizophrenic urges to travel, acquire valuable teaching experience and – most importantly – rack up scores of demented stories to tell the kiddies down the road.

Asia is currently the Big Pimp of the ESL game, although placements in selected European, African or South American nations are feasible. Currently South Korea and Thailand are your best bet for dropping money into the gluttonous OSAP hole: salaries in China and Thailand are comparatively low, and Japan ’s astronomical cost of living eats cash fast.

Rest assured that none of these locales will be a cakewalk. This is not free money, and you won’t be attending the Happy Fun Joy Resort for Cultural Condescension and Unintelligible Fucking. In some cases, you’ll be making more money than an average family of four. English is a big deal in Asia , and parents pony up boatloads of dough so their precious sons and daughters will turn up aces on national exams and get into the prime universities. It may be quite the shock to realize that you, the irresponsibly drunken philanderer, hold so many futures in your trembling hands. You might, if you aren’t careful, grow up a little.

Although most Asian locals are excited to welcome foreigners and accept their shortcomings, you’ll need to toss aside most of the inbred assumptions of privileged Western life. You’ll have to be flexible and compliant, accepting of new mentalities, hierarchies of power and bizarre (to you, anyways) cultural customs. You’ll receive gifts with both hands and never, ever pour alcohol with your left. If you’re the type of person who sends back Greek salads because the feta cheese is too “clumpy” for your liking, you may want to stay home. If you think you might like to try throwing yourself vigorously into brand new lifestyles and perspectives, ESL is your bread and butter.

The actual act of teaching can be intermittently rewarding and infuriating and apparently it is not permissible to beat the children with a boat oar when they’re bad. I’ve looked into it. Instead, a wondrous blend of creativity and understanding and “meh” are recommended as a successful formula by most seasoned veterans. Some schools are sketchy by nature, and in these cases your adaptability (or skill in conducting midnight runs out of the country) will be put to the test. Every ESL experience is a grab-bag, a big question mark. For some, this is what life is really all about.

Interested? Mildly terrified and possibly aroused? All you need to apply is a B.A. degree, although TESL certification at an accredited institution will earn brownie points and certainly help. You’ll want to link up with recruiters or ESL corporations via the Internet – it’s useful to negotiate with multiple recruiters at once, comparing job offers to ensure you get the best placement. Research cultural conventions and no-no’s, and Google search schools with enticing positions for illuminating (and possibly damning) feedback from previous teachers. A good place to start is Dave’s ESL Café @ www.eslcafe.com.

Us liberal arts majors may not have streamlined career paths waiting for us at the end of the tunnel, but at least now we have the means to keep Big Capitalism and Gluttonous OSAP off our throats… while we timorously spread English neo-colonialism across the globe. Ahhh, the life of an Arts graduate will never be easy.

Written for the Blueprint, with future articles of further elaboration in mind. ESL is a big fish to catch in a single day.

I like how I'm always trying to encapsulate the university Arts student as a broke-ass bleeding-heart socialist with no interest in the 'grim facade' of a routine life of consumerism. Clearly I am idealizing and not taking nearly enough time to remember the people who were learning alongside me... because they were nothing special. Certainly not counter-culture or revolutionaries of any calibre, but I always thought it would've been cooler if they were, like the bitter Arts hippies on TV.