they said yes; I said no

Dongguk University has made it official: today, I received what was termed, by our department office at Dongguk's Dharma College Foreign Language Center, a "letter of reappointment or termination," which I had to sign this morning before class started. I told myself, before I even saw the document, that it didn't matter which sort of letter I would receive: I'd been planning to leave whether Dongguk wanted me back or not. But part of me wondered, given my not-exactly-stellar evals last semester, whether Dongguk would want me back. Signing a letter of termination (technically, a non-renewal of contract; profs in Korea are rarely fired outright: they're simply not asked to renew their contracts) would have been, I admit, a blow to my ego. But the letter I saw before me, this morning, said that I had the right to renew if I wanted to, i.e., Dongguk wanted me back. The runner from Seoul campus showed me a second form, which was all about my intentions for the fall semester: continue or not? I signed the "not" section, making my intentions perfectly clear: I'll be leaving Dongguk University, bound for a life of well-paid corporate serfdom. Been real, guys.


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