As I was went to get milk for my coffee this morning, I happened to glance at my co-workers shelf, which is next to the fridge.  Steve is teaching a writing class, and the day before, he mentioned that he thought some of his students had cheated on their first writing assignment.  Somebody suggested he google some of the phrases online.  Lo and behold!  Paragraphs word for word.  This is what I saw on that shelf.

“Excuse me, Mr. Kim.  Your paper is highly suspect!”

Joe has compiled a list of the posted working conditions from various Korean universities.  Most of my friends also work at universities, so it’s interesting to see what other places are offering.

How to read the listing:

Chinju National University of Education

16 hrs/wk, 2.3 MA/2.0 BA, housing: provided—furnished, vacation: paid summer/winter

It means:  16 hours a week, 2.3 million won ($2425 USD) a month if you have a Masters degree, 2.0 million won ($2109 USD) if you have a Bachelor’s degree, a furnished apartment, and you get paid vacations in the summer (July/Aug) and winter (Jan/Feb).  The Korean school year starts in the beginning of March.

Remember, just because someone works at a university doesn’t mean they teach university classes.  Over the years, universities have realized there’s a lot of money to be made running “hagwon” classes on their university campus.  Since most university classes finish by the afternoon, there are a lot of classrooms vacant after that time.  Coincidentally, children get off from school by three or four o’clock.   My university started running a kids program last semester.  For the upcoming semester, I’ll be teaching mostly Freshman to Senior conversation classes, but I’m also obligated to teach 2.5 hours, two days a week in the after-school children’s program.  I don’t mind teaching kids, so it wasn’t a big problem for me.  Still, I’d rather be teaching all university classes.  There’s a lot of planning involved when teaching kids.

I finished my second day of work today.  Even though there were a few bumps in the beginning, for the most part, I think things will be good here.  I work four days a week, with a day off on Wednesday.  Of course it’d be preferable to have my day off on Monday or Friday, but a break in the middle of the week won’t be bad.  Two days of work, a day off, two days of work and two off.  I won’t be discussing work too much on this blog, but I will leave you with this…

The president of our university wrote a book called (I kid you not):  “Open Wide Your Mouth and I Will Fill It.”  It’s on the university website.

I was doing cut-out Santas today with seven 5th grade boys.  They’re a rowdy bunch, so I got a little suspicious when everyone quieted down and started whispering.  It was like the telephone game, where one boys whispered something to another, who passed it on to the boy next to him, who passed it on to the boy next to him.  The funny thing was, I wouldn’t understand what they were saying anyway, because I don’t understand that much Korean.  I was a little bummed out at first, thinking that a bunch of 5th graders didn’t think I was cool enough to let me in on their secret.  I finally found out what the "secret" was at the end of class.  All the boys said, "Ready?  Hana, deul, set…" (1, 2, 3 in Korean)………….  "Merry Christmas, Teacher!"  It was really cool and made my day.  Maybe I’m just easily impressed!