a day of prep and tutoring

My morning began with a text message from my buddy Tom, who woke up with a nasty, severe, and likely contagious eye infection that had made his eye swell shut. He texted me a photo in which he looked as though a boxer had taken a shot at his eye. I have more taste than to reproduce that photo here (although I must say the prospect is tempting), so you'll have to make do with your imagination.

I'm now in the midst of prepping for a gig I'm doing at Seoul National University tomorrow. This work comes courtesy of the infamous Young Chun, who offered me this opportunity. I had originally said a sort-of no for [mumble mumble] reasons, then changed my mind to a yes. Young was very accommodating, and he passed the high-paying gig along to me. I won't say how much it pays, but it's substantially more generous than KMA's handsome W70,000 per hour, and I can use all the extra cash I can get.

I'm working with SNU's career-development center. 57 students interested in practicing job-interview techniques will be visiting me in groups of 13-15 as part of a summertime "employment camp" hosted by Korea's top university. I'll interview each student and provide feedback (give more eye contact, know your facts, be sure to dress well, have no typos on your résumé, etc.) for about six hours (there's one unpaid hour for lunch), and voilà—it's done. Young assures me that the job is easy, but I'm prepping like a madman all the same.

To that end, I've printed out a list of "50 Common Interview Questions," a list of "Interview Dos and Don'ts," and I'm in the process of reading over 57 résumés, looking for ways to tailor-make the questions I'll be asking the students. Many of the CVs already showcase impressive skills and short-term employment histories; my main worry is that everyone's going to be perfect during their interviews, and I'll have nothing to say. Koreans get suspicious when there aren't any complaints. It's a complaint-driven culture.

Of course, as Murphy's Law would have it, when the ZIP file from SNU (containing all the kids' résumés) arrived a few days ago, I opened it and groaned: over 80% of the files were in that goddamn ".hwp" format. I forced myself to find an HWP reader for Mac, and luckily, the Apple Store had a free download. Thus far, it's working perfectly.

So I'll be prepping well into the night, stopping only to tutor Amy for an hour. Then it's bedtime, and I'm up at 5AM to make sure I'm at SNU well in advance of the 10AM start time. Work is from 10AM to 5PM: seven hours total, six of which are paid.

Ought to be interesting, and many thanks to Young for the gig.


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