Daily writing prompt

If you could relive one year of your life, which one would it be?

View all responses

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.

My wife was deeply unhappy with my decision. Before joining the public institution, I had spent nine years as an administrator at a private college. I had also left that position after disagreeing with the college president over how she managed the school and treated the people within the organization. Understandably, my wife worried that I had once again abandoned a 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 an international organization 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 the one I had previously received.

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: I would have to leave the school ran by an international organization approximately a month before its graduation ceremonies. The organization’s foreign representatives tried to persuade me to stay. However, despite my repeated requests in the past, they had never given me a contract to sign. The absence of a binding agreement ultimately gave me the freedom to leave.

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. 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.

I am reminded of something that happened when the school where I served as principal applied for accreditation. 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 do so because they were happy or because I want to change what happened. I would relive them to recognize, while I was going through them, that the uncertainty, pain, and apparent failures were leading me toward the place where I truly belonged.

Now, I have found my niche under the sun.

It is South Korea.