Publisher's Synopsis
"Most of it's gonna suck."If I could travel back in time to the beginning of my teaching experience, that's what I'd tell myself.I got into the English business-as I assume most people do-because I saw it as a freebie for travelling. I didn't precisely like travelling, but somehow I'd gotten it into my head that travelling would be the next best thing to do after college. Nor did I have much of a clue about teaching aside from a month-long preparatory course I'd taken shortly beforehand. Heck, as a virtual shut-in, that was the extent of my experience in human interaction. I was launched into a foreign environment with little knowledge about how to handle a normal conversation, much less a class. Every day I struggled to hold my nerves together and even make eye contact with the students. I should've crashed and burned, but by some miracle I survived. Fast-forward five years and three countries-Japan, Mexico, Russia-and I'm still at a loss for how I pulled it off. Even so, I wouldn't slap my younger self on the back and say "you're gonna make it, kid. Somehow." Far from it, I'd save myself the stress of those five years by detailing how it was gonna suck and why. If you couldn't figure it from the title, that's the aim of this book. I'm at a prime point in my life for complaining and before the measured dispassion of adulthood gets to me, I'd like to commit my disillusionment to paper. Consider it an open letter to myself and to anyone who might be in a similar position.
