I have been, since last November, actively pursuing a teaching job in South Korea. The position would likely begin in late August 2015, depending on whether or not I end up being hired. My hopes are entirely set on this job. It is ideal for several reasons: I move out of Orange County, I travel, I enter a job where my creativity and experience are both relevant and useful. People keep telling me to have a plan B, but I am unable to do that. I will deal with it when it comes, I guess. If it does.
Today I am working with about six or seven recruiters actively, and out of these, I really really enjoy my interactions with four. I have high hopes that one of them will help me find a good job. Unfortunately working towards an E2 (full-time working) visa for South Korea is an extensive and frustrating process. Before I started working with these recruiters I looked for at least an hour before I was able to feel like I wasn’t 100% confused about what documents were needed and how to get them.
Anyway, there is a lot of hassle and cost involved in preparing visa documents. Right now I am attempting to acquire two FBI background checks. Since I have been working on this for several months now, I know exactly what I need. Finding these things is more difficult.
I went into a little tiny Sheriff Services office in San Juan Capo’s downtown and was directed to a different location to be fingerprinted. The woman there wrote down the address and phone number of the place I was meant to go. Today I finally had time to go over after doing some online courses in the morning and headed over. When I park my car and walk towards the building a man passing me in the parking lot says hello, so I smile, then he says how are you? And I pass him without saying anything. I am not here to chat, Mr. Stranger, I am just minding my own business. I can already tell this is going to be a horrible day.
I get to the building and it’s a city-council building. I know I am not in the right place, but I head into the first manned office I see to ask where to go. The lady there points me in the direction of two places: first, the sheriff’s office across the street, where she tells me I need to have an appointment (so it is not an option--the lady in SJC told me I did not need an appt, but she also told me the wrong place to go, so...), and then there was a building across the parking lot where they took walk-ins.
I head to the location across the parking lot and walk into Live Scan Services. It’s a stuffy, small suite. I sign in and sit down. I listen to the man working there as he interacts with prior clients; he is kind of curt and impatient, and I think, great. I just know this is a bad idea. But I wait it out, call me dumb. He comes out and asks me who sent me here. I am thrown off by this question. That isn’t any of your business, how about you ask me what I need? I end up saying I am here because I need fingerprints done for a background check, and he asks why, and I say for a visa, and then he asks for what kind, and I tell him for a working visa for South Korea and he says so you need an FBI background check... and I just say yeah. Then he goes to get a plaque off the wall to show me what an FBI background check looks like. I want to say, look, Mr., you’re talking to me like I’m dumb and don’t know anything, but I think I actually know more than you. What I do say out loud is that I have been working on this for a couple months, so I am familiar with the process. Then he goes on to say that for South Korea I will need an apostille and shows me what an apostille is and explains that it’s costly etc etc, as if I don’t and couldn’t know already. Both are wrong. I know exactly what these things are and how to get them and how much it will cost me. Does he think I just woke up this morning and decided to teach abroad?
It gets to the point where I confuse him so badly by making logical, concise statements about what I need, that he makes me come into his office while he works on his next client’s paperwork to tell him again that I need two FBI background checks, to send to different places, but that I am not here for those, just for fingerprints. Then he wants to know about the places I want to send the background checks. I tell him at first, and then I give up when he starts to tell me things that don’t matter to me and do not pertain to my situation. I say, look, I just need fingerprints. It doesn’t matter on your end where the background checks go after I get them. I will deal with that. And he finally says, well you’re just not speaking my language so I don’t know what you want. But I guess I can just give you inked prints. (WHICH IS WHAT I CAME IN SAYING I NEEDED!!!!!!)
He speaks to me disrespectfully, assuming I know nothing, and assuming that I am dumb because I do not understand what he’s saying. I feel like I made it clear that I didn’t care what he was saying because it wasn’t relevant to me, not because I was like, wait, what are you saying, you’re making too much sense. I understand him perfectly, except when he goes into vague broad statements like well every school has their own background form, so I don’t know who your employer is, and I’m confused about what to give you.
He handed me two forms for inked sets after deciding I was an imbecile incapable of listening to reason. I went to sit down and fill them out, but then I thought, I don’t need to do this here. On top of everything else, his fingerprint cards were more expensive than I had been told to expect. So after a moment I stood up and threw out the form I’d filled out partially and left. I felt like standing in the doorway and shouting by the way! I am at least twice as smart as you!!!! But that’s not really like me, and he would have just been confused anyway.
((Moral of the story: do not, ever, go to Live Scan Services in Aliso Viejo, CA, if you are a young woman without anyone else with you. I have a distinct feeling that if my dad had been with me, the man there would not have treated me like he did. I often have this experience. I have a young face and I am a woman, so people automatically talk to me in a certain tone and lack a certain respect for my ability to comprehend more of a situation than they are probably able to. But whenever I bring my dad with me, they don’t even try it with him. This is extremely frustrating. Women with slightly more aggressive attitudes are also taken a lot more seriously, but even then, I’ve experienced with my younger sister (who is definitely kind of intimidating when she needs to be) that men, especially, and even male peers, do not take her/me seriously. They always assume that we know less than we do and that what we want is unreasonable somehow. Yet my dad makes the same exact request in the same language and they don’t question him at all. Part of this is because he is notably older. Part of it is that he is a man, more expected to know about this stuff. Anyway. NIGHTMARE.))
Anyway, today. After leaving Live Scan Services, I drove across the street to the sheriff’s department to ask to make an appointment for a later date, or to see if it were a possibility they didn’t actually require appointments and the lady at city council was just wrong. Of course, I step in there and within two minutes the front-desk people are joking with me and smiling, friendly, and telling me I don’t need an appointment. They were even willing to make prints for me that day even though it was already 4.30 and they usually stop doing prints at 4. Unfortunately since I didn’t have exact change on me (or any cash / check) I wasn’t able to do it today. But I know that I’ll walk in there tomorrow and out within an hour or less and have everything I need, hassle-free.
There are so many things wrong with what happened here that I can’t even tell if any of it was my fault. The information online about getting fingerprinted is a bit outdated. The information that the lady in San Juan gave me was just flat out incorrect. (I mean, not all of it. The prices and the fact that they take walk-ins was helpful even though it was contested later. And the correct address was across the street. But still. Come on.) The Live Scan Services was a nightmare. The sheriff people were so helpful and nice I almost cried all over them. I may still do this tomorrow.
It's also extremely difficult to find information online about the process of getting your Criminal Background Check through a channeler and then apostilled after that. But it isn’t that I didn’t do my research. I did. I am pretty comfortable with research and I always do my best to find out everything I can before asking someone for help. But I still only feel like I know what to do because I am working with very helpful recruiters. I decided a while ago that after this process is over for me and done with and problems are kneaded out and I have a helpful point of view, I’ll just write an article about my experience and find a way to put it online. It’s really ridiculous how hard it is to find info online. The process is complicated, yeah, but when things are explained orderly and correctly, it doesn’t seem so intimidating anymore.
There have been times like today throughout this whole process that make me just want to give up because everything seems stacked against me and I am doing this alone, I don't know anyone who has done this before and even when I know I am headed in the right direction I still run into so many difficulties. Why is it so difficult? Even if the rest of my life were happy and calm, this would still be disturbing, but beyond this, nothing in my life is easy right now, everything is turbulent and frightening.
I’m trying so hard to enjoy this time before I leave, but I’m not having much help with that. People make decisions about me and then treat me a certain way based on these ideas--but they’re wrong so much of the time, not having taken the time to try to understand me or what I need or want. I am used to this--I’m quiet, so people think I’m unfriendly or I dislike them. I’m not social, so people think I’m unfriendly. I’m young, so I must not know anything... I am used to this, but I am getting tired. How much can I take? I feel bad about being glad to leave. But given certain things...how could I not be?
Despite everything, I am still determined to make this happen. I feel so much that I could be useful and fun as an English teacher, that I have something to offer as an English teacher--and beyond this, that Korea has a lot to offer me, as well. I’m waiting right now for my life to start.
Transitions aren’t ever easy, are they? I think about this a lot. I visited UCI recently and watched students in the student center enviously, fondly, in other ways that I couldn’t name. I think about it. Transitions.... I think and I come to this--it makes sense. It simply is. Even our bodies are full of strange contraptions at the joins, a lot of tendons and bundles and sockets and irregular shapes.
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