Stress

[tulipfield]

It always seems to come in cycles. It's probably a product of being such a procrastinator, at least in part.

• house party this weekend. These things are supposed to be fun and if I didn't have other stuff on my mind I guess I wouldn't be worried, but I'm stressing about it because no one wants to host an un-fun party.
  
• taxes. Yes, I've procrastinated... but in my defense, school was basically out from Jan 1st to March 1st, and in the flurry of the beginning of the year it's difficult to get administration on your paperwork, in this case a record of last year's pay. Once I get it, though (and I'm gonna wrangle it out of someone by next week), it should hopefully not be such a pain as last year and I should have enough time to mail it in. Note, I cannot use turbotax or the EZ form that most people do.
  
• new year. With a new year comes a new co-teacher (whom I have yet to teach with, and the more the classes get put off the more I worry about how well we'll be able to work together, considering his English skills (!) leave much to be desired and I'm not hearing good things from the kids who have already had his class. I blame my vice-principle and his shit hiring practices. Also, I have a mountain of teaching hours this semester, 23 regular hours plus a teacher's class plus third and fourth grade tutoring God knows how many times a week. Fridays I have six regular classes and I'm pretty sure me and the co are gonna collapse of exhaustion at the end of all of it.
  
• summer plans. My dad's got a conference in Beijing this summer so he and my mom are gonna go there and then come to Seoul for a bit. I'm stressing out over planning their itinerary and also seeing about getting weekend plane tickets for myself to Beijing that won't cost me an arm and a leg. (It's ridiculous, it's only an hour flight but the best rates I'm turning up are over $400 and the stupid travel agency is shaping up to be a whole 'nother headache. And I'm trying to get my dorky brother to fly out here later by offering to pay his ticket with my frequent flier miles and basically providing everything when he gets here, and after one response he's not getting back to me. T_T It's a free trip, why the fuck wouldn't you jump on that?
  
• job security. There've been rumblings on the internets and from other foreign teachers that the province is cutting like 1/3 of all teaching positions, and I've recently heard the vice-principle and my co-teacher talking about it. Nobody's said anything to me yet and I guess they think I can't understand, but I'm a little put out at not being told straight-up what the hell is happening to my job while people proceed to talk about it right in front of me. That wouldn't be right even if I couldn't understand. Anyway, I don't understand the details so tomorrow after classes I have to make time to interrogate my co-teacher.
  
• grad school. Applications start next month; my goal this month is to get my letters of rec requested. Getting into grad school and getting funding is the biggest worry looming on the horizon, but the previously mentioned problem is complicating the situation. My contract ends in October, and school would start next March. I want to stay in Korea in the interim, teaching at this school, so I can a, keep making money; b, keep up my Korean; c, not have to pay to fly back to Korea again; and d, not have to go job hunting for a 5-month stint either here or in America, because five months is a long time to go jobless but not long enough that I think I could easily find employment. All this to say, I was planning to try for an extension on my contract, which would also benefit the school because I would finish out the school year with the kids and my co-teacher would not have to deal with a new foreign teacher in the middle of the semester. I mentioned it once to my co-teacher and she had seemed supportive. It's possible they wouldn't have sprung for it, but if the province throws out my job altogether there's no chance at all.

*sigh* Time is flying. Being here this long makes you feel like life will never be any other way, and it's scary to think what will happen when it inevitably ends and you have to move on. More than anything, I don't want to be back at square one. I feel like I'm really making headway in Korean and I'm gonna be utterly disillusioned if I can't make use of this investment of time and money. (Something that will have taken up almost every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evening plus a few thousand dollars over the span of almost two years.) I don't want it to be yet another foreign language down the drain. If I can't pull this grad school thing off, I just don't know what I'm gonna do.