Saturday, September 26, 2009

Teaching English

I have arrived at a few really tough decisions. I am torn between these things:

-learning Chinese by teaching English for a year in Taiwan but having my Spanish and ASL suffer from lack of use
-improving my Spanish by teaching English in Mexico, but losing a great opportunity to learn Chinese and having my ASL suffer from lack of use
-not wanting to be gone for a whole year because of a couple very important relationships that I don't want to suffer from absence

I don't know exactly what I should do. Both teaching options hold merit. I know my Spanish isn't as good as I want it to be and part of me says it is foolish to move on to learning Chinese before I have really mastered Spanish. Another part of me recognizes the great opportunity I have to learn yet another language. I LOVE languages and cultures. I am gripped by a great desire to learn other languages so I can communicate with more people. You may know that I am quite the talker and the more people I can talk to, the better. Ideally, I would take a split between the first two options. A semester in Taiwan teaching, then a semester in Mexico (or another Latin American country) teaching.

I also have to recognize the fact that I do not want to be a teacher. I like teaching in theory, helping others learn something new, but there is a butt ton of work that goes into it that I do not want to do. I think I could swallow the negative aspects of teaching for an overseas, temporary teaching job. But that still leaves me stuck between Mexico and Taiwan... I hadn't even thought of teaching English in Mexico until two days ago. Life was blissfully less complicated before I did. I think, however, that finding a job that starts in the Spring in Mexico will be harder than finding one in Taiwan. Or what if I were to do both? What if I did a year in Taiwan, and a year in Mexico? That is not my first choice and presents entirely new problems.... ugh. Why must I yearn to learn so?! GAH!

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