With the pandemic going on I, like a lot of people, had a sudden reaction as if I was back at school during summer holidays. I was being paid to simply stay at home and doing all I can to help keep others safe. So, I stayed home, used all my free time enjoying the piece and quiet, played games, caught up on my anime and TV shows and slept the rest of my day away. By end of the first lock down I had left my home a grand total of two times, in 6 months.
It wasn’t until I realised how long had past that I suddenly felt sick with fear. How much of my time had I wasted of my life doing literally nothing. Despite the misfortune of so many, we were granted a great gift of time. Time that I could have spent improving myself or furthering my career.
What could I have done with my 6 months.
Learnt a Language – Being an English speaker I could have learned any of the Germanic or Romance languages to near fluency, including; French, Spanish, Norwegian and even Swahili.
LearntComputer Programming – There are numerous methods for this available such as an online learning platform like Udemy or Team Treehouse. A 100 hour course could give you all of the knowledge you need, as long as you read around and practice. You could even simply use Youtube for free.
Got into Fitness – Improve my health and mind by exercising, improving my strength and confidence.
Or Literally any skill I wanted – and be a ‘good’ 6 months ahead of the game. Most people will do no more than 1 hour a day after work, what about a 9 to 5 equivalent of training, or even just studying something interesting when I would have gone to the pub.
It wasn’t until people began going back to work and meet their friends that I realised how foolish I had been, not using my time to the fullest. Now, I feel frustrated every time I don’t do something to improve myself, I feel as though I am wasting my time.
This was truly the point when it finally made sense to me. All those years as a child being told to: “work hard”, “don’t leave it to the last minute” and, “time goes faster when you’re older”. I now find there isn’t enough time in the day to do everything that I want to do.
So,What am I doing now
It seemed like the right time to quit my previous job as a member of front of house staff. At this point in time, I am working online as an ESL (English as a Second Language) Teacher. Fortunately, or unfortunately, this isn’t a 9-5 role, but it does give me lots of time and enough money to survive. With my free time I keep myself in a ‘9-5ish’ routine but add in studying.
So, I am currently;
Working as an ESL Teacher
Exercising – I no longer have the ‘tired’ excuse and I need to be healthy to travel well
Studying Japanese – for travelling Japan and Asia
Leaning Web Development – to supplement my income, and a role you can travel with
Blogging – to establish a semblance of presence for developing an online business
In any case I can say whole heartedly, “I have learned my lesson”. I refuse to waste my time. If I want to make my life easier in the future, why waste the time I have been given now, especially with a second lockdown coming into play.
What do you think? Are you wasting your time? Learning new skills? Got a new job? Please let me know. If you have any questions then Leave a Q.
2020 has been an interesting year to say the least, but have no fear the teacher is here. Despite the pun yes, now is a good time to get into online teaching. People have been loosing their lively hoods left right and centre and yet I have had no problem with walking straight into a job as a Kids Online English Teacher, why?
“With zero experience and the right attitude you can go anywhere, everyone has to start somewhere.”
Russell 2020
Teaching isn’t for everyone. Sitting in front of a screen for several hours per day explaining a dreaded school subject to someone who doesn’t speak your language can be daunting to say the least, but it does have its little rewards. When you suddenly recognise your students improvement as they answer a question you never thought they could in perfect English… using your accent. Absolute gold.
ESL now?
There is some debate over whether it’s a thriving industry right now. With an international super plague encompassing the Earth, lot’s of smaller businesses are struggling to keep staff and students alike. The good thing, is for the bigger companies with their well established online presence. These companies are actually expanding and actively hiring to meet the demand. With each small business that closes, hundreds of new students are looking for teachers from the more well developed companies.
Now don’t get me wrong, the pay isn’t perfect, you will likely be earning around £10 an hour plus incentives, especially if you have just started. But this is more down to a choice than a restriction. I am of the mind that you should learn the ropes before earning the money. I went for a company that gives you all of the help you need as a beginner, with zero lesson preparation. Once you have gotten used to the lesson styles and layouts you can increase your wages, most do his by 6 month reviews or simply by changing companies.
To be honest there are lots of businesses out there, each already have their own curriculum that you literally just need to ‘read of the powerpoint’ to be able to complete the lesson. However, that’s not really teaching is it. You will find that you quickly develop your own separate mannerisms and techniques for delivering the lesson to different students, be it someone who struggles or an English language prodigy.
Do I need another language?
The single most terrifying thing that I remember, and get asked regularly, is how do you teach a child who doesn’t speak your language. Well, first things first, that’s kind of the point of ESL in the first place. I find it actually benefits you if you don’t speak the same language. You learn how to adapt to not being able to say an explanation and the child develops quickly by being “forced” to learn and understand more. Ignoring this, there is no need to worry at all, the lessons are specifically designed to slowly develop an understanding of the language and be built upon. There really is no need to worry.
Hours
The best thing I have found with teaching English is the time difference. For me being in the UK, I get up and start work at 8:00 a.m. but finish at 1:00 p.m. This means it leaves me the whole day to do as I please.
I am also not bound to any set schedule. I can choose my working hours, meaning if I don’t want to work a specific day or time, I don’t. I book time off when I wish, as long as I give some time in advance, and I can also pick up more lessons if I am free. If my plans fall through and I get the day free, no problem, I’ll do some teaching for extra money, win win.
Anywhere
Finally a great factor for online teaching is something you can’t do with teaching in class. I can work from anywhere in the world, as long as I have a good Internet connection. This will depend on the company that you work for and their eligibility requirements. Some more strict companies will allow you to work in a foreign country if you are going to a set location for an extended period and can prove your connection is good. This means travelling is still perfectly on the table, as long as you account for the time differences for the students you teach of course.
Personally I would recommend a company that teaches in China, purely for the times and remuneration. The country’s sheer size means there are literally hundreds of companies to choose from, all wanting teachers, leaving you with a better wage per demand and if you live in the UK, the time difference is near perfect.
Not online
If online ESL isn’t for you but you would love to travel for a while then try a physical school location. An excellent part of these ESL schools is that you are not the students only teacher. Each student goes to an in country physical class to learn, you are the local English teaches native assistant. The students come to you to practice what they have learnt with a truly fluent speaker, meaning most of your students will already know the material if not more. You could choose, if you wish, to go to one of these school on yearly contracts where they will help you to set up your life for living abroad whilst you can travel the country from a home base and live in the culture. This is one of the routes I am considering taking myself.
For warning
When choosing an ESL company there are many, many schools to choose from, take reviews of these companies with a pinch of salt. I spent weeks looking for companies and kept swaying due to former employees reviews. When I joined a company I realised something important, you are wanted in this field. Thats not to say you are irreplaceable, but they know what to expect from a beginner and will generally make allowances when you first start.
Reviews
If you don’t like where you are at, just leave and go to another company. I personally have never experienced any of the issues that I have read about, even for the company I work for. Some of the issues were even things that, now I have been in the situations, I recognise as, honestly, the employees fault not the company. I think every business will get disgruntled employees. That’s not saying that at times the company isn’t to blame, these do happen too, just like everywhere else, but things can be blow out of proportion. Does anyone ever review something unless they had a terrible experience and want to hurt them back, just food for thought. But as I said, just leave, it is very easy to walk into another ESL job, especially now. And if you really don’t like it, go back to what you were doing with the experience you have in that field, simple. You can even work both, get your feet wet so to speak. Most of the companies now have removed any minimum weekly hour requirements so trying it out is perfectly fine, even for 1 lesson a week.
Any who…
Long story short, don’t spend too much time overthinking everything like I did. I believe this to be the best decision I have made as of my journeys so far. I earn as much money as I did previously, working less hours and at sociable times. I spend the rest of my time learning new skills that will be useful for travelling.
What do you think, is this something you would be interested in trying? A change of pace from the daily grind or perhaps even a career change. I hope this helped anyone who was on the fence or has, at least, made some of you think more about this less spoken job sector.
If you have any further questions feel free to Leave a Q.
Climate change. Yes, I am going to explain this topic, just like the millions of; bloggers, Youtubers, journalist and comments section enthusiasts before me. However, I have done actual research into understanding geology and climatology so am able to offer a simple and easy to understand explanation of the main issues.
What is Climate Change?
Climate Change is literally the average planetary climate (weather, temperature, humidity, rainfall, etc) changing. Simple right!
What’s the problem?
The problem is that the climate is increasing in temperature. Each climate zone, be it snowy tundra, forests or deserts are all getting hotter. That’s it.
The planet does this anyway what’s the issue?
Your right, the planet does go through cycles(Milankovitch Cycles) over the course of 10’s to 100’s of thousands of years, from going hot to cold. Due to a series of 3 primary factors, the Earth’s; tilt(obliquity), how circular it’s orbit is(eccentricity) and which direction the pole is pointing(precession) e.g. the north start(Polaris). These changes happen slowly over time and when they match up, around every 400,000 years it leads to very cold and very hot periods in the Earths history.
What people don’t seem to realise is that Earth’s primary climate is cold. There is generally a longer period of cold, or ‘Ice Age’, than a period of warm weather.
An Ice Age is easy to define- A period of time when there is solid ice on the planets polar regions. At this point some of you may have realised that, yes, we are in fact in an Ice Age right now.
So………
So this is where the problem comes in. We are forcing the Earth out of it’s natural climate with pollution. This is far more impressive when you recognise that the Earth likes being in a cold state and it struggles to stay away from Ice Ages. Don’t miss understand me. When we say Ice Age we mean, Ice in our polar regions, this has the effect of cooling the overall temperature by reflecting some of the heat from the Sun’s light back out into space, the Albedo effect, keeping the planet cooler. Although, there have been instances of the planet going into a state known as “Snowball Earth”, simply meaning that the ice was so expansive that it went from each pole and met in the middle at the equator. These are very difficult to break as the amount of heat reflected is very high, snow has an albedo of uptown 90%, so 90% of the Sun’s light is reflected back out into space, how do you melt it?
If you want to read more about this phenomena and Ice Ages, a great book, for the layman, is Snowball Earth by Gabrielle Walker.
So why is the Earth getting hotter a big deal then if it does it all the time?
There are several major, major issues that people don’t either understand or aren’t explained.
Climate is significantly important for life. Every organism on the planet has adapted to their specific levels of temperate, rainfall, humidity, etc. As climate gets hotter, organisms will gradually migrate further towards the poles to follow their natural environment, in essence, the climate they can live in moves. Yes, this will leave room for new organisms to evolve and fill this “space”(niche), but it will become far to hot for large organisms to survive and the deserts will expand.
With more deserts, there is less space for food to be grown as well as people to live in. The liveable planet space is, essentially, getting smaller.
With the hotter weather, water will also be more readily evaporated meaning less to drink and give to crops. Those of you who understand greenhouse gases will recognise that water vapour is the primary greenhouse gas, not carbon dioxide, although our carbon dioxide release is adding fuel to fire so to speak. More water vapour in the air means more heat is stored on the planet, meaning it gets even hotter. This causes a rather unpleasant, runaway cycle. The hotter the air, the more water vapour can be stored, the hotter the planet gets. Again, don’t miss understand, it is our release of extra greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide which allow for the Earth to heat up and begin this cycle.
The water cycle, something everyone learnt at primary and early secondary school. However, the more complicated idea is studied in hydrology, the ocean currents, and can get a little complicated.
Let’s start with ice on the poles. The South Pole is the big issue with it being Continental Ice. This means it is ice on top of land, not floating in the sea like in ‘Titanic’. When this melts it adds more water to the oceans increasing the global sea level (The north pole ice won’t change sea level due to buoyancy). This means coasts will become flooded and less land will be available for living and farming as most farm land is built next to rivers for irrigation. This is the least of our problems. The real issue comes in when you recognise that it’s fresh water.
So…, water is water isn’t it?
Nope. If you change the amount of salt(salinity) in the oceans it will not only kill lots, and I mean lots, of marine life, things we eat, but it will change the ocean currents. What people may not realise is that there is enormous currents that circulate water all around the planet. These currents are controlled by the winds as well as rising and sinking of denser and less dense water(less dense goes up, more dense goes down). The water density can be altered either by temperature (hot and cold water) or salinity, such as say, billions of litres of cold, fresh water flooding into the oceans from the polar icecaps. These help to do many things such as control the temperature of regions and “mix” the water. For example, the UK should be significantly colder and much snowier that it is, but due to the Gulf Stream from the Gulf of Mexico, the warm water heats up the UK making it rainy and miserable, but not freezing cold.
The really strange thing is this isn’t true, yet. The local affects are actually more salty and more fresh in each region, strange no. Well, this is because the hot weather evaporates more water. As salt isn’t evaporated the percentage of salt to water goes up, meaning the sea is saltier. Also, as more water is evaporated more rainfall is produced keeping the rivers (fresh water) cleaner of pollutants and other minerals.
Finally, an idea that I have personally never seen explained anywhere or even pointed out. Fossils fuels where made in the Carboniferous by the collapse tree into swamps. Trees and other plants are able to absorb carbon dioxide which they use to grow. When they die this stays in there “bodies” until they are broken down. However, the fungus that decomposes trees had not evolved in the Carboniferous period. This means when trees fell in the swamps, they stayed there, they piled up and, over millions of years, they became buried and crushed into solid “lumps of tree” also known as coal.
This means that the coal we are burning has not been accessible to the atmosphere for 100’s of millions of years AND we have no way of removing it. Once it’s burnt, that’s it, unless we can progress technologically enough to absorb and store carbon to keep it isolated from the atmosphere the climate is irreparably altered. Planting trees can off-set the affects of the carbon dioxide, but when each tree dies that carbon is released again.
When did this start?
The industrial revolution. Yes, it once again has the blame fall squarely on the western industrialists when we began to progress rapidly but burning this miracle rock for energy. It is even notable in the geology record through Ice cores and some modern sedimentary(dirt) deposits. All of the complaining about other countries burning fossil fuels is, honestly, quite hypocritical and unfair if you ask me. Yes, no one should continue to burn fossil fuels, however, unless the infrastructure is developed, unless the technology is shared and advanced together then how can we refuse them. Do you want electricity or not, the answer will always be yes which, for now unfortunately, means burn.
Hello big, wide, cosy world and welcome to the last blog you’ll ever read. This blog is all about my, eventual, travels and potential development of an English language company.
With any luck, you will be able to follow my travels around the world and look on as I make a fool of my self, learning the ways of the world. If you keep an open mind, you too will be able to make all the same mistakes I will, but surely that’s half the fun. How do you learn without first making mistakes.
Thomas Edison supposedly said –
“I have not failed 700times to make a light bulb, I have found 700 ways how not to make a light bulb.”
Thomas Edison
Poetic but he has a point.”
Other’s follow the philosophy of Bismarck –
“Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.”
Otto von Bismarck
Well…
Make the same mistake twice. That’s half the fun.”
Russell
Reading is great, but why read it from a book or watch it on the tele when you can be in it, see the colours, smell the flowers, hear the music. History should remind you of the mistakes and successes we made along the way. How can we be wise without learning the wrong answers first.
No answer is wrong, just just used incorrectly. There is a difference between knowing the answer, and knowing how to use it.
Wow, I thought this was clever, off the top of my head.
I come from a small rural town where I have to drive everywhere of interest. But, I can walk 5 minutes and be in the middle of nowhere. A rather surreal idea that I never truly appreciated until I went to university and lived in a big city. I genuinely began to miss the green trees that I would wake up to every morning. It’s funny to me now thinking that I would whinge about going for walks in the woods as a child, it’s called being lazy.
My house mates had seen trees before, obviously, but never really experienced a truly rural lifestyle. The idea that shops aren’t just down the road, or a deer in your garden and a boar walking down the main road being is an everyday occurrence. I want to see what life is like in the rural areas of other countries. Cities are great, but the real life and culture is found in the small homes and towns where the locals live as they always have, only mildly affected by the progressing country at large.
I want to see all the wonderful places and meet all the fascinating people, starting with Asia and work my way west.
This all being the case with the removal of the international travel ban, once all is fixed of course.
I love to imagine what life would be like had I grown up in a different country. Is there a young man in rural Japan thinking ‘what is it like to live in rural England?’. These are the questions I want to answer.
I also have some rather lofty goals of trying to remove the barrier of culture and language around the world. As an ESL teacher I plan to start my own ESL school, curriculum(I didn’t use autocorrect for that I swear..) and application to make learning languages easier, starting with the only language I actually know, English. Making the world a smaller place means accepting everyone, despite there flaws, and improving ourselves. Moving the world forward so that we can all see hover cars before it ends. I believe combining each nation’s cultures can only improve each others, and make our lives far more interesting.
Every now and again I will be posting about interesting topics, things I think people should know more about or even answer questions that you ask. Please feel free.
