If I could relive one year of my life, I would choose not a calendar year but a twelve-month period: March 2012 to March 2013. Those months were among the most difficult, uncertain, and ultimately transformative of my life.

In March 2012, I resigned from my position at a public tertiary institution because of irreconcilable differences with my fellow school administrators. My resignation took effect in May. Until then, I had planned to spend the remainder of my career in my country’s public school system. The position was good, and the long-term security it offered was difficult to surrender, but the working environment had become too toxic for me to remain.

Even so, I did not leave the public institution without making a meaningful contribution. While concurrently serving as dean of the college and chair of its Education program, I spearheaded the effort to secure from the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) the permit required to offer Mathematics as a major in the program.

My wife was deeply unhappy with my decision, and her reaction was rooted in our previous experience. Before joining the public institution, I had spent nine years as an administrator at a private college. The school deducted a monthly contribution from our salaries for its retirement fund. Employees who left before completing ten years of service could recover only the amounts deducted from their own salaries; completing ten years would have entitled me to receive the institution’s share as well. My wife therefore urged me to remain for one more year. Financially, she was right. However, I had already become deeply unhappy because of my disagreement with the college president over how she managed the school and treated the people within the organization. Another year felt like a price I was no longer willing to pay, so I resigned and forfeited the institution’s contribution.

Understandably, when I decided to leave the public institution after serving there for only about a year, my wife feared that I was repeating the same pattern—walking away from another stable position without knowing what would come next. Her fears were eased on June 1, the first day I was officially unemployed, when I received a call from a representative of a Pakistan-based international school system that had acquired an existing basic education school in the Philippines. They offered me the position of school principal, with a salary considerably higher than what I had previously earned. The workload was also lighter because my duties were primarily supervisory and carried no required teaching load. However, after spending so many years in education, I could not divorce myself entirely from the classroom. I therefore accepted a part-time teaching position at a tertiary institution in a nearby locality.

Despite that apparent good fortune, I was unhappy.

Some longtime employees had hoped that the school’s new owners would appoint one of them as principal. They had served the institution for years, while I was a newcomer. Their unspoken question was understandable: Why him? As a result, I encountered doubt, indifference, and resistance. At the same time, years of professional turbulence finally caught up with me, and burnout set in. It did not help that I was also struggling with personal demons of my own making.

One day, I realized that I had fallen into depression.

Still, I resolved not to be defeated. I stood my ground, confronted what was draining me professionally, and began dealing with the personal problems I had helped create. More importantly, I searched for a way to begin again. That search led me to apply for a teaching position in South Korea.

There was one complication: accepting the position in South Korea meant leaving the school approximately one month before its graduation ceremonies. The foreign representatives of the Pakistan-based international school system tried to persuade me to stay. However, I had never signed an employment contract—not because the organization intended to withhold one, but because the person responsible for preparing and sending it repeatedly forgot to do so despite my constant reminders. The absence of a binding agreement allowed me to leave without fear of legal repercussions for breaching a contract.

Still, the decision was painful. I had grown attached to my students, and it saddened me to leave without seeing the Grade 6 and fourth-year students graduate. In the end, however, I had to choose between sentiment and my well-being. I could feel my depression worsening, and I knew that remaining merely to participate in the graduation ceremonies could cost me the opportunity to begin again.

On March 2, 2013, I flew to South Korea and began working as an ESL teacher.

Fourteen years later, I am still here in the Land of the Morning Calm. Coming to South Korea was one of the best—if not the best—decisions I have ever made. The country has had a genuinely calming effect on me. In many ways, it tamed my spirit—not by extinguishing the fire within me, but by teaching me where and how to direct it.

I arrived strong-willed, restless, and accustomed to resisting environments that I believed were unhealthy or unjust. South Korea gave me something I had long needed: stability, order, and enough quiet space to breathe, reflect, and rebuild myself. Here, I learned that strength does not always have to announce itself through confrontation. I could disagree without being disagreeable, remain ambitious without being consumed by ambition, and enjoy solitude without feeling isolated. The same intensity that once left me exhausted gradually found more constructive outlets—in teaching, research, writing, physical well-being, and continuous self-improvement.

This country has given me opportunities for tremendous personal and professional growth. It allowed me to rediscover myself not merely as an administrator, but as a teacher, researcher, writer, and lifelong learner. South Korea did not change the essential person I was; it helped me become a calmer, more disciplined, and more purposeful version of him.

I am reminded of something that happened when the school where I served as principal underwent FAPE recertification. Securing that recertification was important because the school needed it to remain eligible for the government assistance administered through the program. During the evaluation, one of the accreditors asked why, after spending nine years at one college, I had transferred to a public institution only to leave after about a year. She also noticed that I had previously worked at three other schools.

One of her fellow accreditors remarked, “Perhaps he has not yet found his niche under the sun.”

Perhaps she was right.

If I could relive those twelve months, I would not return because they were happy, nor would I return to change what happened. I would relive them so that, amid the uncertainty, pain, and apparent failures, I could recognize that they were leading me toward the place where I truly belonged.

Now I have found my niche under the sun.

It is South Korea.

… and I would like to be on the Moon with the astronauts.

I would choose it not to determine whether the Moon landing was real, but to experience what it represented. For nearly all of human history, we could only look upward at the Moon. We worshipped it, wrote poems about it, used it to measure time, and wondered whether anyone could ever reach it. Then, for the first time, a human being stood upon it and looked back at Earth.

I think seeing Earth from there would affect me even more profoundly than seeing the first step. From that distance, there would be no visible national borders, political parties, religions, races, or territorial disputes—only one small, luminous world carrying everyone who had ever lived.

Hopefully, NASA and SpaceX will be able to bring humans back to the Moon soon… and to Mars as well.

Although it is a biographical drama—not really what one would call a tearjerker—it made me cry.

You should see 12th Fail because it is a deeply inspiring reminder that failure is not the end of a person’s story. Based on real events, the film follows an ordinary young man confronting poverty, academic setbacks, and seemingly impossible odds without surrendering his principles or his dream. It is moving without being overly sentimental and inspiring without pretending that success comes easily. More than a story about passing an examination, it is about resilience, discipline, integrity, and the people who help us believe in ourselves when our own confidence begins to fail.