Hi, friends! It’s been a really long time since I’ve posted anything here, so I thought I’d share an update on my life. I recently graduated from university. I wasn’t planning on graduating spring 2019 since I was in the process of completing my recently added event management minor and hoping to complete the business honors program as well. Unfortunately, the college of business told me that I have to forfeit my minor and honors as I had already completed my business administration major requirements. Seems quite unfair for the school to punish me for being a pro-active student.
In addition, the university would not refund me the graduation date change application fee even though the school told me I had to pay before getting approval (which I obviously ended up not receiving and was not told so until after I paid). I went to the bursar’s office to request a refund, the staff there redirected me to the office of the registrar, the staff at the registrar redirected me back to the bursar’s office, and vice versa four more times. Eventually, a lady at the office of the registrar said she would deliver it to someone higher up but that she didn’t know when I would hear back from them. More than a month later, no response so I called the bursar’s office to connect to the office of the registrar after being on hold for an hour and a half. After getting past the automated machine options and finally connecting to a person, I asked to be connected to the office of the registrar only to be sent back to the same automated machine options! As you can see, the whole situation was immensely infuriating. In the end, I never ended up getting a call back or my refund. To top it all off, the professor in charge of the marketing honors program forgot to add my name to the honors certificate recipients list, so I never got that either.
I found out that the college of business was forcing me to graduate less than two months before graduation, so I was very unprepared in terms of securing a full-time job. I was extremely angry at the situation and worried for my future. Now, I am currently in an ambiguous situation where I’m not sure what to do. Should I get a full-time job and get settled into the adult life or should I finally pursue the travel blogger dream by teaching abroad, which would predictably provide less income?
The real issue here is that I wouldn’t actually be able teach until next year since I have to wait until the program start dates, so I feel like I am wasting my time just working part-time for months while I wait around with no guarantee of actually landing the job. I also am interested in two different programs, but I am unsure if I should apply to both to increase my chances or just one as I risk being blacklisted from future opportunities if I reject the South Korea one and will be prevented from applying for two years if I reject the Japan one. Ideally, I would like to do a year each since three years total (on top of my one year waiting for results) seems like a long time to be away from having a full-time job in the field of my college degree. There are lot of huge life decisions to make here that will really affect the direction of my future, and I’m just unsure of what to do.
On the bright side though, two of my closest friends whom I had met while studying abroad in South Korea are also on board with teaching in South Korea, so it’s really exciting to possibly live in South Korea together again. We also get to help each other with the application process, so although it’s still a tedious process, it’s kind of reminiscent of the time we all struggled together dealing with study abroad paperwork.
I’ll update you all more in the future, but I’m really hoping to get into the South Korea program with all my friends and then possibly do the Japan program the following year. Having to make all these decisions is really daunting, but I’m hopeful that things will fall into place soon!
Until next time,
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