job prospects

This coming Sunday, I've got two meetings coming up. The first meeting is with a rather pushy-sounding, 70-something Korean lady who says she had met my mother several times. This lady's son is an editor for Pearson Publishing, based in New York. The son apparently knows of a possible job opportunity in Pearson's Seoul branch. The lady doesn't seem to know much more about the job, although I thought I heard her say the job would pay around $60,000-some. That got my attention. At the very least, I'll hear the lady out, although I'm not too excited about working in publishing: 40-plus grinding hours per week of high-stress, deadline-oriented slavery to the almighty Cubicle and Monitor, with a meager 2 weeks per year of vacation. I'd much rather go the university route: $45,000/year, 9 months of teaching 18 hours/week, 3 months' vacation, and the respect that comes with being a college instructor and not a cubicle-bound prole. Still, I might take the publishing job if it means living on the peninsula, thereby placing me physically closer to a potential university job.

The second meeting, later that afternoon, is with a younger Korean mom who wants me to tutor her son, a high-school senior, in SAT strategy. She also mentioned that her son's friend needed help. I don't know whether the kids need help with math or reading or writing or all three; I suppose I'll find out this Sunday. This is just another tutoring gig, which ought to net me between $300 and $400 a month extra, so there's no dilemma about accepting this work. I'll do it for as long as I can. And the gig comes just in time, too: I had deferred my Sallie Mae student loan repayments until March (a forbearance, actually-- not a deferral-- which means accrued interest is capitalized into the principal), so in about sixty days I'll once again be hemorrhaging an extra $340 a month. Given the increase in my apartment's rent (from $750 to $780) and the increase in my monthly insurance premium (from $90 to about $130, thanks to last year's accident), I could use the extra cash.

So I've got these two meetings on Sunday. We'll see how they go.


_