Dispatches - July 15, 2009

As a blogging novice, I am left with little doubt that few are following these posts. That being said, those that are checking every so often will notice the delay in updates as of late. And for good reason.

I've spent a notable amount of real estate in these pages equating the Fulbright Orientation thus far to a personal collegiate renaissance. It's easy to forget that college is not all apartment parties and club events. The past few days have been a stark reminder of the late nights and early mornings spent committing facts to memory for an exam or hammering out finer points for a paper. My consistent ability as an undergraduate to function on 4-5 hours of sleep for stretches at a time while writing some decent papers has long been a source of pride. I've had to rekindle that 'old college try' spirit this week with daily Korean vocabulary quizzes, hypothetical lesson plans, and extracurricular activities.

Korean continues to present the largest struggle. My instructors are two very patient and very enthusiastic young women from Seoul. How they have the energy and stamina of disposition to sound out letters and rudimentary sentence structures for hours a day is beyond me. This Monday was our first official quiz and, suffice to say, on Tuesday many of the ETAs (Fulbright vernacular for 'English Teaching Assistants') were assigned mandatory study hours. I performed rather poorly myself, despite studying, and have found the afternoons and evenings of the past few days completely monopolized by required events. Yesterday, for example, I went straight from class to Tae Kwon Do practice to a cab outside the dormitory to take us to a Korean drumming class. After returning from drumming, I had fifteen minutes to shower and make it up to an hour of mandatory study hour (unaffectionately deemed 'detention'). After study hour, I had a study session with You Hana – my Korean instructor for the first class period. Following You Hana's help with my homework, I quickly typed up the remaining answers to a required reflection piece that was due at midnight. It was 1:00 a.m before I caught my breath – just in time to begin studying for another vocabulary quiz eight hours later at 9:00 a.m.

The past few days have been an iteration of that level of scheduling. My iPod Touch has been a big help for scheduling on the go and keeping track of my homework assignments. Surfing the web when wireless is available is an added bonus, but the program directors have caught on and warned of confiscation consequences should someone be caught on a device during a presentation.

On that note, there has been a steady stream of presenters throughout the past week. The most recent batch has been focused on various elements of teaching. Today we heard someone discuss classroom management and methods to control, reward, and punish students. Yesterday featured an ETA about to complete her grant who employed games often in her classroom and had helpful advice for ETAs planning on doing the same.

Yesterday we had a visit from a retired professor of Korean history. It was a bit early in the morning for a history lesson, but the material was fascinating. He touched upon the influence of Confucianism as well as Korea's long history of struggle to maintain a national identity. He was alive during Japanese occupation and was assigned a different last name in elementary school as part of an effort to completely control and mobilize the Korean people. I've started an email dialogue with this professor – I'm trying to recall material from my Confucianism course in college to ask pertinent questions.

The final presentation I'll mention stretched from the late morning to the early afternoon on Sunday. We were visited by a former Fulbrighter who has spent the better part of the past 15 years in Korea. From what I can gather, he is a private tutor and also a professional photographer. He spent the first half of his talk addressing the stereotypes and cultural hurdles that Fulbrighters might confront during their grant. Much like American popular culture condenses other nations and cultures into easily-digestible soundbites, it seems many Koreans have a particular notion of Americans. It was fascinating to learn that Korean-American Fulbrighters can have difficulty surmounting the bias many native Koreans have in expecting the Americans to speak fluent Korean. While just American as a blonde-haired and blue-eyed variety, the Korean-American is saddled with increased expectations whereas a 'typical' American (read: Caucasian as seen on American television) can get away with knowing much less Korean and understanding fewer accepted norms of propriety.

I have long-considered teaching English abroad as a pseudo-philanthropic – or at least an admirable – pursuit. This occupied the same space in my mind as my consideration of Korea as a model education system. This presentation, however, completely turned that concept on it's head. We learned that English is used as a status symbol of sorts. Much like a resident of the UK with a refined British accent seems ever-so-slightly above the everyday American, a person speaking perfect English is considered in a higher echelon of Korean society. There were examples given of students trying to 'dumb-down' their English skills around friends so as to not alienate themselves. The importance rested upon English can be directly related to the entrance examination for Korean high school students. This omnipotent test is like the SAT's in the United States, but far more critical.

Apparently certain segments of society – the upper ranks and jobs – are inaccessible without first graduating from one of three prestigious universities. To land a spot in these ultra-competitive schools, the entrance exam is critical. The exam is composed of math and English and thus it becomes vividly apparent why families consider options such as moving to the United States, New Zealand, or England for a few years to spending large percentages of discretionary resources on secondary schools designed solely for exam preparation. These hagwon - as they are called - were evidence for the presenter that the Korean system had failed. No longer can a student expect or hope to rise to a prestigious job without spending considerable time - and money - in the hagwon system.

In this cycle that often leaves students overworked and exhausted, the English teacher can be viewed in a rather unfavorable light – as part of the problem. While I will need my full grant year to make that judgment, I was extremely interested in this perspective and glad for the contrarian view.

At any rate, I now have an opportunity to sleep for more than 5 hours and I plan on taking full advantage. While I am prone to focusing on the negative, I remain grateful for and impressed with the tremendous organization required to arrange the events and materials that are so filling my calendar. Having a core group of bright and motivated classmates with perpetually-pleasant dispositions has been invaluable. Before embarking on my grant year, I often contemplated the difficulties I could encounter in a homestay and the personal evolution I would require to adapt to life in Korea. Orientation was a secondary thought – a brief interlude. I began feeling within the past two days that I may very much experience 'homesickness' from Orientation as a I leave this rich environment for the homestay. Of course it's only the second week and there is plenty of material yet to cover, but I have felt a question formulating about the situations from which I derive value and happiness and how to recreate them in a long-term scenario. Amid the cultural and lingual learnings I hope for a chance to pause ever so briefly – every so often – and contemplate what I have learned about myself as well.