Friday, November 6, 2009

Back to School

I've always liked school... or rather, I enjoy learning new stuff and writing papers/taking tests never bothered me. If graduating from high school = 12 years of education, then I've spent ~21 yeas in school (4 years for BS, 1.5 years for MS, 2 years for MBA, and 1.5 years of JC classes). Dang it, I could have been a medical doctor.

I'm been really bored at work for the past 18 months. This is the 4th or 5th job rotation and there's nothing else I'm interested in, except maybe for business development. The problem is that there are lots of people interested in the same job and the current guy in the position doesn't appear to be leaving anytime soon. Additionally, all the analysts from ~10 years ago have either left the company or been promoted to a director title, except me... so maybe the company is sending me a message to move on.

One thing I've looked into is teaching. My first experience teaching (other than tutoring) were several seminars at Yenching University in Beijing. I went with PESI way back in 1998 and gave a few lectures on corporate finance. Trying to get more hands-on experience, I signed up to teach at the University of Phoenix afterwards and ended up teaching intro accounting and finance for about a year. My 10 year work anniversary next January is about the same time as the next round of promotions/raises. I guess I should wait at least that long to see what happens.

After my trips to China, I've been thinking about the future. Since I have no family, I can probably dump all my stock/options, live on savings for the next 20 years, and wait for Social Security (ha ha). Anyway, I found out that UCI Extension offers a certificate program for TEFL and they're holding an information session later this month. If I'm not feeding a mortgage or wife/kids, I can take a few years off and teach English/business somewhere. Once I get a TESL certificate, I think I could easily find a teaching position in China (with a 95% pay cut) though I'm still not sure if I can live there for more then 2 weeks at a time. Maybe Korea... then I can spend my spare time stalking K-pop stars. :)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

NOOOOOOOO!!!!!

please keep your nose to the grind-stone. we need more people like you that pay way more taxes into the system then they take out. somebody's got to pay for my health insurance, financial bailouts, and solar subsidies.

totochi said...

Nope, my new goal in life is to be a net user of government resources instead of just funding everyone else.

closetmusician said...

Yo, come join me here in China. It'll be weird living here but it'll definitely liven up your life, I guarantee it :)

Or more seriously, how about going back to school to get a MA in history or something? You know the last few years I've really loved reading history as well, really regret not taking more history classes when I was in school. What's been a good book you read so far? I read 'A History of the Middle East' by Peter Mansfield and thought that was quite excellent, recommend you checking that out.