My top three sources of consternation (or more accurately, the goals in my life that I worry about not accomplishing) at this time are:
- Finding a job so I can earn enough money to go to university next year in September.
- Studying enough for the Level 1 Japanese Language Proficiency Test on December 6 so I pass.
- Gaining discipline so that whether I’m attending university, working long hours at a job, or facing massive white spaces in my schedule due to unemployment, I still use my time wisely.
That list might not be accurate. There may be a better hierarchy or other goals that fall higher or lower. The fact that I mixed concrete and abstract detracts from the list’s usefulness, but nevertheless, these are the things that occupy my mind. I’m taking a year off from college and I don’t want that to turn out to be a wasted time.
I thought it would be relatively easy to get a job as an English teacher in Japan. I speak Japanese, so surely any company would want find me an attractive prospect, right? I can relate to the students in their quest. Alas, that does not seem to be the case. I’m still confident I could relate to students, but I am not quite as attractive a prospect as I first thought. Nearly every large English-teaching company in Japan requires a college degree; in fact, the only company I’ve found that doesn’t is Gaba. I’ve applied to them three times (they put out a new job posting every month, and they have a school right close to where I live) and they finally took notice this time, but it’s been several days and they haven’t called. I should call them, to, as they said in the e-mail, “expedite the process”.
That seems to be the only English-teaching opportunity of that sort. I’ve also applied to several jukus as a tutor to help kids with their homework and study for exams. In that area, my attractiveness is again dulled by the fact that I can probably only teach English. While at an elementary level I could probably help with maths as well, the fact that I never went to Japanese school beyond kindergarten decreases my ability to converse in Japanese maths terms. I could always study those terms specifically, I suppose. I did pretty well in maths in high school; I don’t think the concepts would be a problem. But my strong suit would be tutoring English. There is a demand for this but I fear there is also a copious supply. When I was applying for English-teaching jobs through Gaijinpot I was one of literally hundreds hungrily snapping at any applicable opening that came along. It was a surprising and slightly overbearing discovery.
Ideally I want a job that requires or at least makes use of both Japanese and English. That’s what I can do and that’s what I will get paid more than the minimum for doing. I don’t want to take you through the whole tour of where I’ve applied to and what I’ve done, but I’ll just mention that I did apply to and even got two interviews at TGIF in Shibuya. Then it didn’t work out, for some reason. The Baseball Cafe near the Tokyo Dome is not hiring at present. Neither is Outback.
I’ve applied to a few hotel jobs, those haven’t come to anything yet. Nor has my abundant potential as a model. Those Shibuya scouts just aren’t taking notice. Ha. As if I could be a model. Oh, but the money…
I’ve made other applications and gotten suggestions and contacts from friends. I’m really hoping for something to break soon, because I’m going stir-crazy and I won’t be able to celebrate Christmas in good spirits if I still have the fact looming over me that my gap year is almost half over and I’m still not accomplishing its primary objective. At least I made money during the summer.
Enough about that (although if anyone actually does end up reading this, advice or even contacts would be much appreciated. Or donations, of course. That’d be swell – and yes, I do know that there’s absolutely no chance of that happening. There is a website – Kickstarter.com – that people can use to get funding for creative ideas. I probably couldn’t use that to get to university, though). What do you want to hear about? The Japanese test?
Basically, if I pass I’ll have a vastly higher chance of getting hired by a Japanese company, or get a higher salary because of my proven ability, but that’s more of a career course and I’m not looking for that at the moment. No, really my main reason for taking the test is improving my ability, gaining confidence, and amassing some bragging rights. I passed Level 2 two years ago, which is a formidable accomplishment but still only second-best. I can only be as good as a Level 1 failure. But if I pass Level 1, that shows I’m at least that good, right? And there’s no ceiling for how good I could potentially be. I’m not sure if this is making sense to you. I’m talking about how it looks on paper, on a resume, for example. If an employer reads that I passed Level 2, he/she will assume I’m between Levels 2 and 1 (which I would be). But if I’ve passed Level 1, there’s no telling how good I could be! (even if in reality I only barely managed to pass it).
But mostly I want to learn and prove to some people that I can do it.
As for discipline, well, that is a huge topic, isn’t it? Massive, and totally worth going into. However it’s so large that I hardly know where to begin, and I’m starting to feel like I should get back to the job search or studying (starting? I feel that way every minute I’m not doing one of those two things!). Ah, the life of an unemployed individual. You’d think it would be relaxing. It’s rather stressful. But I don’t want sympathy. If anything, give me a kick in the pants. I have to man up and make those phone calls until something comes through.
I’m enjoying this writing. Although I’m not sure about the whole others-finding-it-and-reading business. I tried searching for my own blog on Google and it didn’t show up. Right now my plan is to keep writing in hopes that with more quantity more attention will come, not that I’m looking for attention, just a murmur of response. From someone I don’t know, who thinks so similarly. Is that you?
Maybe I need to post more tags.
Oh, alliteration, yes. Most of my alliteration is unintentional, so for me it’s not so much the question, “Should I incorporate it as a poetic device?” as much as, “They’ll think I’m corny if I don’t replace some words in there, won’t they?” And the answer is yes. Yes, yes you do. Yes I do. And no I didn’t. I didn’t change the title, I left it. And I added this little paragraph just to make the title sensical, or rather, the parenthetical amendment to the title sensical, so that I could leave the title proper as is, because I was just that attached to it as soon as it popped out. My high school junior year English teacher would tell me that a ‘because’ should never have a comma preceding it, but I put it there because you were supposed to pause for the approximate length of a comma when you read that sentence. That’s how I would’ve said it were I speaking to you. Again, an improbable justification; you would’ve walked away by now.
Out.
-Brad
Inspiration's Waiting Room 