Money as a Foreign Language (MFL)
When I made the decision to move to Mexico, it was with the realization that my career potential would be seriously limited, both by the language barrier and by the fact that Mexican immigration will only permit you to work in whichever specific field your degree or certificate says you know (ie. if you want to be a telemarketer here, you need a business marketing degree… seriously…). This lack of career potential didn’t concern me a great deal at the time, as it was the very fact that I have not a clue what to do with my post-theatre life that inspired me to make this move: if you need some time to think, why not at least think in an interesting country?
But rent is a reality no matter where you go, so, not entirely sure what a Masters degree in Drama would allow me to do, I invested the $1000 in a ridiculously easy TEFL course and applied to work here as an English teacher. This has been my life for the past seven months.
Teaching English is not rocket science, particularly when you’re as fortunate as I have been and end up with almost exclusively senior executives as students: intelligent, determined, and with jobs that depend on English competency. It’s also fun and rewarding, and gives you valuable insight into the daily lives of at least a sector of the Mexican population.
But there is a downside. Freelance teaching is uncertain: classes cancel while you’re waiting in the lobby for them to start, and cancellations often mean not getting paid. Students can cancel class altogether with little or no warning, leaving you with a chasmic gap in both your schedule and your pocketbook. And the travel from one location to the next, while apparently very good for the waistline, is exhausting and expensive. My Best Case Financial Scenario was a mighty reasonable salary, yet the reality was seven months of panicking about whether I could afford groceries this month or not.
But my own rising dissatisfaction in a life teaching English went deeper than that: for me and my own definitions of my future, teaching English as a Foreign Language is not a Real Job. And, damn it, I needed a Real Job so I could get some Real Money and get on with my Real Life already. I was sliding into a bit of a funk in December, pre-adventure in Yucatan, based almost entirely on this elephant-sized gap in my life.
In January, a Real Job almost literally dropped out the sky into my eager lap. My brother’s wife’s father (I’ll give a minute to work through that…) had visited Mexico City in November for an International Trade Mission sponsored by the Government of Ontario. The in-market representative for the mission was a lovely woman, G, who ran her own international trade marketing firm and who impressed the highly particular Mr. Brother’s Wife’s Father a great deal with her professionalism and skill. So, when she mentioned to him that she was looking for a new marketing specialist, he flipped her my number.
I got the job within two days, after a frantic call to my father for business advice on what to include in a Statement of Short, Middle and Long Term Goals and a laborious two hour interview entirely in Spanish. I started mid-January.
So what do I do exactly? The marketing firm I am working for provides in-market support to Canadian companies interested in trade development opportunities in Mexico and vice versa. We can do market studies, set up matchmaking opportunities, provide industry information and tips. Most of our clients are third-party relationships, sent to us by the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development and Trade. I am the token English person.
The irony that I moved to Mexico and ended up working for the Ontario government has not escaped me, by the way.
I don’t know entirely how someone with a background in theatre administration can end up an International Trade Marketer, but it’s an exciting job. It is busy and independent and involves a great deal of writing and research, both of which I adore. It is, in fact, quite close to what I was doing prior to moving here, save that my clients are now embassies and not theatre companies. And, best of all, the doors to my future are all wide open with this job; my predecessor is now working for the Canadian Embassy.
(If you’re wondering how we got around the entire immigration/what’s listed on your degree issue, we haven’t. As far as Migración is concerned, I am still just an English teacher. It’s not a complete lie: I still do teach a class every morning just for the hell of it.)
But there is a downside. Is there always a downside in life? Like a reverse silver lining? A muddy puce lining? Should I just come to expect and make arrangements for the inevitable muddy puce lining?
When my boss came to me on Tuesday with my very first paycheque, my very first reaction was, “Ah, this must be an advance. I’ll get the rest on the 1st.”
Mexico is a Third World country, no matter what the First World glossy overcoat of Mexico City might suggest, and I in no way believed that the earning potential here would be comparable to back home. Still, based on the salaries of those around me, I thought I could at least count on something reasonable. The marketing firm hadn’t been able to give me a firm figure in the interview, as it is a project-based company and therefore cannot provide a salary, so I had come up with a Worst Case Scenario of about $800 Canadian per month (a perfectly reasonable low-end living wage here).
What I received on Tuesday was a quarter of that. And, no, it wasn’t an advance.
So now I have a dilemma: is this the kind of position where you subsist on ramen noodles until your ship comes in (project-based work means there is earning potential there, as the company builds and more work comes) or, with student loans and visa screaming at me from Canada, is this a financial risk I simply cannot afford to take right now? And if I were to quit, I’d be quitting for what, exactly? Teaching English again, which wasn’t actually any better paying when you factor in all the cancellations and which was making me fundamentally miserable on account of its not-Real Lifeness? Do you hang onto what you have in the name of resume experience? Do you hang onto it while you look for something else? Do you take this as a sign that it’s probably not a good idea to be seeking a career path in a foreign Third World country? What do you do? And, in the meantime, how do you afford the $500 that you have to send home every month in order to pay the minimum payments on your debts?
I am conflicted. My gut says to stay with the job because, just as when I was debating whether to leave Toronto for Mexico, Plan A is maybe not your ideal situation but there simply is no plausible Plan B. Plan A is at least excellent experience, potential to meet some really interesting people in a field I could easily have a life in, and it is a positive working environment, even if it means I am facing my 31st birthday without any sign of financially being a grown adult.
And this is the right answer, I’m sure, both in theory and in practice. It’s just the simple math that’s stopping me from being entirely comfortable with that answer.
But rent is a reality no matter where you go, so, not entirely sure what a Masters degree in Drama would allow me to do, I invested the $1000 in a ridiculously easy TEFL course and applied to work here as an English teacher. This has been my life for the past seven months.
Teaching English is not rocket science, particularly when you’re as fortunate as I have been and end up with almost exclusively senior executives as students: intelligent, determined, and with jobs that depend on English competency. It’s also fun and rewarding, and gives you valuable insight into the daily lives of at least a sector of the Mexican population.
But there is a downside. Freelance teaching is uncertain: classes cancel while you’re waiting in the lobby for them to start, and cancellations often mean not getting paid. Students can cancel class altogether with little or no warning, leaving you with a chasmic gap in both your schedule and your pocketbook. And the travel from one location to the next, while apparently very good for the waistline, is exhausting and expensive. My Best Case Financial Scenario was a mighty reasonable salary, yet the reality was seven months of panicking about whether I could afford groceries this month or not.
But my own rising dissatisfaction in a life teaching English went deeper than that: for me and my own definitions of my future, teaching English as a Foreign Language is not a Real Job. And, damn it, I needed a Real Job so I could get some Real Money and get on with my Real Life already. I was sliding into a bit of a funk in December, pre-adventure in Yucatan, based almost entirely on this elephant-sized gap in my life.
In January, a Real Job almost literally dropped out the sky into my eager lap. My brother’s wife’s father (I’ll give a minute to work through that…) had visited Mexico City in November for an International Trade Mission sponsored by the Government of Ontario. The in-market representative for the mission was a lovely woman, G, who ran her own international trade marketing firm and who impressed the highly particular Mr. Brother’s Wife’s Father a great deal with her professionalism and skill. So, when she mentioned to him that she was looking for a new marketing specialist, he flipped her my number.
I got the job within two days, after a frantic call to my father for business advice on what to include in a Statement of Short, Middle and Long Term Goals and a laborious two hour interview entirely in Spanish. I started mid-January.
So what do I do exactly? The marketing firm I am working for provides in-market support to Canadian companies interested in trade development opportunities in Mexico and vice versa. We can do market studies, set up matchmaking opportunities, provide industry information and tips. Most of our clients are third-party relationships, sent to us by the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development and Trade. I am the token English person.
The irony that I moved to Mexico and ended up working for the Ontario government has not escaped me, by the way.
I don’t know entirely how someone with a background in theatre administration can end up an International Trade Marketer, but it’s an exciting job. It is busy and independent and involves a great deal of writing and research, both of which I adore. It is, in fact, quite close to what I was doing prior to moving here, save that my clients are now embassies and not theatre companies. And, best of all, the doors to my future are all wide open with this job; my predecessor is now working for the Canadian Embassy.
(If you’re wondering how we got around the entire immigration/what’s listed on your degree issue, we haven’t. As far as Migración is concerned, I am still just an English teacher. It’s not a complete lie: I still do teach a class every morning just for the hell of it.)
But there is a downside. Is there always a downside in life? Like a reverse silver lining? A muddy puce lining? Should I just come to expect and make arrangements for the inevitable muddy puce lining?
When my boss came to me on Tuesday with my very first paycheque, my very first reaction was, “Ah, this must be an advance. I’ll get the rest on the 1st.”
Mexico is a Third World country, no matter what the First World glossy overcoat of Mexico City might suggest, and I in no way believed that the earning potential here would be comparable to back home. Still, based on the salaries of those around me, I thought I could at least count on something reasonable. The marketing firm hadn’t been able to give me a firm figure in the interview, as it is a project-based company and therefore cannot provide a salary, so I had come up with a Worst Case Scenario of about $800 Canadian per month (a perfectly reasonable low-end living wage here).
What I received on Tuesday was a quarter of that. And, no, it wasn’t an advance.
So now I have a dilemma: is this the kind of position where you subsist on ramen noodles until your ship comes in (project-based work means there is earning potential there, as the company builds and more work comes) or, with student loans and visa screaming at me from Canada, is this a financial risk I simply cannot afford to take right now? And if I were to quit, I’d be quitting for what, exactly? Teaching English again, which wasn’t actually any better paying when you factor in all the cancellations and which was making me fundamentally miserable on account of its not-Real Lifeness? Do you hang onto what you have in the name of resume experience? Do you hang onto it while you look for something else? Do you take this as a sign that it’s probably not a good idea to be seeking a career path in a foreign Third World country? What do you do? And, in the meantime, how do you afford the $500 that you have to send home every month in order to pay the minimum payments on your debts?
I am conflicted. My gut says to stay with the job because, just as when I was debating whether to leave Toronto for Mexico, Plan A is maybe not your ideal situation but there simply is no plausible Plan B. Plan A is at least excellent experience, potential to meet some really interesting people in a field I could easily have a life in, and it is a positive working environment, even if it means I am facing my 31st birthday without any sign of financially being a grown adult.
And this is the right answer, I’m sure, both in theory and in practice. It’s just the simple math that’s stopping me from being entirely comfortable with that answer.
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