Ave, Joe!

Do you work at a university? If so, and if you're not paranoid about revealing details of your salary and working conditions, help Joe out and tell him what's up. He's doing a massive comparison of conditions at universities all over Korea, but he needs help to fill in all the blanks.

Let me once again register annoyance with people who snottily ask, "Why?" when someone poses a general, information-gathering question about salaries and conditions. This happened once before when I was asking people about how their universities calculated work hours and overtime: one person apparently wouldn't offer any information because she couldn't get past the straightforward nature of the questions I had asked. She seemed to see hidden motives and wrote in to question my data-gathering methodology(!), finishing her email with a "thanks, but no, thanks."

Some advice for the fearful: if you don't want to release your personal info, just don't release it. In the meantime, don't burden others with your insecurities. If you live in Korea, a country where distant relatives and even perfect strangers will ask you about your salary without blinking an eye, you should be used to such questions by now (I'll make an exception for fresh-off-the-plane newbies). Get over yourself; either answer or don't answer. Don't engage in histrionics.


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