Straw Poll


Everything is a little confused but here's a breakdown:

* I was told there would be a great demand for my teaching services. So far I've given three lessons to one student. I was then told demand would pick up after the school vacation, but in truth no student wants to take on extra work in the final term, when they're also revising for final exams.

* If there is demand, it would mostly happen at the start of the next school year - which is in September. Five months away.

* The boss has all sorts of plans. These include further building work in the office, more building work in the classroom, the setting up of a second classroom, filling it with computers with the latest (legal) software, running IT and accountancy courses, building a summer school at another site, digitising existing textbooks and writing new ones from scratch.

* Current balance in the school bank account: Zero.

* The one reliable man we've found to do the building work won't be around consistently over the next few months, and won't do any more work till he gets paid for the last lot. Some of which he'll have to do again because he cut corners because we couldn't pay for materials to do it properly.

* The boss says, seeing as I'm feeling down here, he can fly me back to England for a few weeks to do some computer work for him - mainly making PDFs of textbooks, and instructing him in DTP.

* After which he expects me to fly back to Bulgaria and teach.

Now. What do you think I should do?

I have a week to decide.

3 comments:

  1. If you're being paid, and are happy there - even if you're doing nothing worthwhile - then treat it as a holiday. Make friends, learn the language, have a good time, train Wednesday, and enjoy.

    If you learn the language you could always get a job interpreting, and add another string to your bow.

    Also with space and time on your own, you could write the seminal K-Twins 'stranger in a strange land' album. ;)

    BUT!

    If you're not being paid: Are miserable, homesick, and the bottom line is the school is not likely ever to take off. Come home as fast as possible ... though bear in mind the UK economy looks like it's on the skids.

    Home is where we are most comfortable and where we can 'achieve' if we push ourselves. Conversely it's much easier to be lazy at home.

    All advised out, now.

    C

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  2. I'll be blunt. Go home.

    But I'm speaking as an American whose expectations of a certain lifestyle probably can't be met anywhere outside the Anglosphere.

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  3. There's a lot of detail, but the short version is: I expect to leave sometime next week.

    The boss will call in a few days to clarify the situation from his point of view. If he clarifies in to be something I can't live with, or to be in flat contradiction to what he's said before, or just remuddies the waters, I'm out of here.

    Two weeks doing nothing is a holiday. A month is dull. Two months and you're climbing the walls.

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