It took my blood, sweat, and tears (ha!) but I finally sent my documents to Korea. After jumping through a bunch of hurdles, I got almost everything I needed. My biggest piece of advice to anyone who is reading this that is applying to EPIK is that the CRC can be a bit of a red herring. If you’re stressed about it, don’t. I got fingerprinted at a Mail Store, but I could’ve done it a lot of places. Do your research. I then used VitalCheck to get the actual background check done, and Monument Visa to do the apostille. These were fast and easy options, although they were a bit pricey. Here’s the thing: if you’re anything like me, you need to apply for your passport the moment you even think about applying for EPIK. From most of my research, it really seems like most applicants are avid travelers (including the one person who reads these posts, hi) – so they won’t have this issue. But, if you’re thinking of applying to EPIK, you stumble across this blog, and you don’t have a passport: GET ONE. I’m from a small town and have barely left my region of the USA, much less the country. I didn’t have one and I didn’t realize just how long processing times are. They are long. I paid $60 and it still took two weeks. I could’ve submitted documents so much earlier if I would’ve already gotten my passport. GET YOUR PASSPORT.

Anyways, my passport arrived May 1st. I had an exam (in Korean class, ironically) that day and then I was off work, so after I took my exam, I went home. Then my passport arrived, so I went to the campus center my college has near my home town (it’s essentially just like 3 class rooms and a computer lab) and used the computer lab to print my 2 copies of everything. I used Walgreens to get the photos for my application – I just put a bunch of them in a collage and cut one out. I then went to the UPS store and paid $107 dollars to do two day shipping to Korea through DHL, with my estimated delivery day being May 4th.

They arrived May 7th, so I’m not going to lie… I’m a little peeved I had to pay for two day shipping when it took 6 days. But whatever! My coordinator said the docs are all in order and we are just awaiting my final transcripts and my apostilled diploma. This is so exciting. He also said placement occurs in Mid-to-Late June. From my research, I’ve noticed most applicants get theirs June 12-17th, with a few outliers getting placed as early as June 6th and as late as much, much later (the latest I saw was July 5th). I leave tonight to go on a trip to Chicago (to see BTS again, woo!) and literally as soon as my bus arrives, I have to call my school to talk to a representative about certifying my diploma ASAP. I’m a very busy girl, if you haven’t guessed.

If anyone needs me, I’ll be freaking out every time I get a new email from now until I find out (if I get) my placement!

& If you are a potential applicant reading this… you got this! Just be prepared!

So, I know I said I’d write another post about my interview the night of and write another post as soon as I knew something one way or the other, but truth be told, I got too busy. Plus, there was a bit of a warning about how some things need to be confidential for the time being. I will share with you the vaguest of comments about my interview for the sake of respecting the program’s wishes of not giving too much insight.

• I got the coordinator I had a feeling I was going to get.
• The interview was an average length and I felt well prepared for the questions I was asked.
• I could not see myself or my interviewer, which was a bit unnerving, and I had a hard time keeping my nervous habits (talking with my hands and stuttering) under control because of it.

I wore minimal makeup – neutral eyeshadow, mascara, tinted chapstick, and concealer. This is a Skype interview, keep that in mind, so I knew most extra efforts would not be seen on camera. I wore jeans with a high-neck tank from Torrid that I put a blazer over, and a Kendra Scott necklace my mom gave me for my birthday a few years back. I also straightened my hair, took my calendar off the wall behind me, and converted my bed from bed mode to couch mode. (Note: I sleep on a futon)

I also wore earbuds, which my interviewer informed me had TERRIBLE audio and so I had to hold the microphone next to my mouth the whole time. (facepalm). Anyways, to make a long story short, I felt confident in my answers, but worried that I had overlooked too many details (nervous habits, webcam, mic problem) and had totally failed it.

I got my results quicker than I expected, and the verdict is that I passed!

Since then, I have been focused on obtaining my documents. I am currently waiting on transcripts, my TEFL certificate, my background check, and I’m trying to get enough money to apply for my passport. Overall, I’m a little worried about getting everything in a timely fashion, but I’m on the right track!

My biggest stressor right now is my diploma. I have my letter of enrollment verification, but apparently, my school takes… a long time to mail out diplomas. I have a feeling it’s going to be a race against the clock to get that turned in on time.

Overall, though, I’m feeling excited and optimistic! I hope anyone who is reading this is feeling positive about their decisions in this moment, and I am wishing you the best in your endeavors!

It is only thirty-five minutes until my interview with EPIK. I must say, today has been quite eventful. First and foremost, I was convinced my interview was tomorrow night up until this morning during my Biology lab. While I had already planned to be ready tonight just in case I messed something up, I really thought it was tomorrow night. It’s not. It’s tonight. Thirty-four minutes to go.

In addition to the discrepancies in what time I thought I had scheduled my interview for, work today was really difficult. What should have been a routine closing shift was disrupted by our ice cream freezer going out, which took a lot of time and involved me going outside into the alleyway between the store I work at and the store next to it, in the dark, in the pouring rain, alone.

Luckily, I have had a few hours to make myself look presentable and also prepare a bit for the interview. I feel both completely prepared and utterly unprepared all at once. Thank goodness that I have this blog, so that I can write in here to kill time, sort through my thoughts, and distract myself from my thoughts all at once.

I will update this blog once again after my interview (two posts in one day? I know, shocking) – and definitely another time after I hear back from EPIK about whether I pass or fail. Fingers crossed for me – and fingers crossed that the storm doesn’t knock out my power or Wi-Fi mid-interview. Hopefully, this is not the end of my EPIK journey.

Twenty-nine minutes to go. (:

All anyone ever says about EPIK is about how long the process takes. How long it is from when you decide to apply to when you actually can. How long it takes to hear back that they received your application, that they want an interview, whether you passed the interview or not, whether or not you get placed. However, it was around April of last year when I discovered EPIK and knew I wanted to do it – and now it’s already the day of. I just hit ‘submit’ on the email containing the essays I worked so hard on, the Rec letters I harrassed professors to obtain, the lesson plan I cried and stressed over for weeks – not to mention the photo of my tattoo. Yikes. Time has flown. Time always flies for me – I’m not sure why. But perhaps that was because I considered February 1st a deadline. It’s not like hearing back from them – which might happen tomorrow or months from now, and might be good news or bad.

When I hit submit, I knew. This has happened a number of times – me hitting ‘submit’ and knowing, in that instant, whether I will get back a “We’re happy to inform you” or a “We regret to inform you”. I suppose I just have to live with that, don’t I? The good news is, if I’m wrong, I will be very excited to get my interview, and very excited if I pass my interview, and very excited if I get placed. The bad news is, if I’m right.. well, first of all, as I’ve said before, all of my eggs are in one basket, so I’m in big trouble. But besides that, not even knowing now that I probably won’t make it is going to save me from the tears that will come when it is confirmed I did not. Seeing that email will still devastate me, even if I saw the rejection coming. So, that’s hard.

But I know that even if I fail, that is not the end of the road for me – it’s just a road block. Stay tuned, anyone out there who may stumble across this blog. I will update you in the future, once I’ve heard back from them one way or another.

There is a proverb that warns “Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.” In modern-day English, it means not to put all of your time, money, resources, etc into one endeavor because if it doesn’t pan out, you will be left with nothing. While I am a Libra and we do favor balance, I’ve never figured out how to do such with my metaphorical egg-basket. Luckily, through research (aka a whole bunch of Google-ing) I’ve found a better take on that proverb.

“Put all of your eggs in one basket, and watch that basket carefully.” said Andrew Carnegie on June 23, 1885. He went on to say, “…men who do that do not often fail. It is easy to watch and carry the one basket. It is trying to carry too many baskets that breaks the most eggs in this country.”

I must say, I agree. Perhaps this is because today I discovered that my so-called “backup plan” to teach locally has failed (and miserably so!) on the premise that I don’t have a master’s degree, have not completed a teacher’s prep course during my bachelor’s degree, and have no intention of doing either of those things, so all of my eggs are already in the TEFL basket. Specifically, EPIK.

So, the question now is – do I keep my EPIK basket, watch it carefully and do my absolute best in nuturing the eggs inside without breaking them and hope to get a job doing my dream with no backup plan beyond my tortuous job at the grocery store. Or do I take the eggs within the EPIK basket and put them into other baskets – Hagwons and TaLK, for example, and perhaps even work in other countries, like Spain, for example.

I will leave that a question for 2019, because if I look too much into it now, I may combust.

“Stop runnin’ from nothin’ my friend. Now, stop this foolish race.”

BTS, “Paradise”

I need to get to bed pretty quickly, because it’s nearing 2 in the morning and I need to be at work at half past 7. I’m excited about tomorrow (aka later today) for many reasons. First, my shift is only until twelve o’clock, and I’m crossing my fingers that maybe we won’t be very busy and I can get sent home early. Most likely, though, that won’t be the case. I have a feeling lots of people will show up to my grocery store to stock up on celery, greens, and lots of other last-minute Christmas goods! I am also excited because, besides getting to leave at noon, in the evening my family and I will have a small Christmas Eve get-together to open a few gifts early and eat lots of snacks together! Then, the next day will be CHRISTMAS. I am so excited for my nieces and nephews to open their gifts!! And the day after that, in the morning my mom and I are getting a new puppy – a little chihuahua we’ve already named Megan – and in the evening I am having a few friends over to exchange gifts and share drinks and probably play card games. My friends here in America are so incredible and so irreplaceable. It will be hard living somewhere without them.

Today, I didn’t do much in regards to furthering my seonsaengnim plans. I had a bit of a scare on the 20th – of my school misfiling some paperwork and trying to take away almost 3,000 dollars in scholarships from me. Luckily, I am not the passive type to think ‘hm, i’m sure it will get sorted out’, and my pointing it out to my advisors helped them reinstate my scholarships to the full amount. This is great, because it means I can start thinking about my plans for EPIK a little more seriously, because I will definitely have the money for document-sending, for luggage, for a plane ticket, and for my TEFL certification. It feels like everything is falling into place, and soon I will be right where I need to be.

Now I just need to lose, like, a whole bunch of weight :~) Oh, well. Baby steps!

“Dreams, Hopes, Forward, Forward.”

BTS, “Young Forever”

So far, I don’t have much done. The issue, I’ve learned from the many videos on EPIK that I’ve watched, is that you go from not having anything to do to, if you’re accepted, having a lot to do all at once. I just finished my seventh semester of college, as I said before, and am about to begin my eighth (and final) semester. Last semester, I made straight A’s for the first time in college. I attribute most of this to the song “Pied Piper” by BTS, and finally finding some sort of “purpose” in life, a.k.a my goal of teaching abroad. One of the classes I made an A in was Beginner Korean 1010, where I made nearly a perfect score on every assignment. I’m nowhere near fluent, but I can read the alphabet and introduce myself, so that’s a start.

Yesterday, I penned the drafts of the essays I will use on my application when I apply in February. I do want to revise them somewhat, but I’m proud of what I have so far. I’ve been asking a lot of questions on reddit and waygook and everyone’s been very helpful. I only wish that Christmas would be over already so that I could begin saving money. I already know all the documents and apostilling that needs to be done will be very costly, but I’m not going to neglect gift-giving, as I love making my loved ones smile with thoughtful gifts.

For now, however, I will try not to work myself into too much of an anxious panic over things I need to do to prepare quite yet. Instead, I am going to spend the rest of my evening watching Apartment Tour and Meal Prep videos, and perhaps researching a good place to get an affordable, yet quality, professional headshot.

Wish me luck!

I’m here to save you; I’m here to ruin you.

BTS, “Pied Piper”

Thanks for checking out my wordpress blog. Super random & not sure how you found me, but I’m glad you’re here. For all future reference, my name is Robyn. Currently, I’m twenty-two. I just finished up my seventh semester of college and, in just a few weeks, will begin my eighth, and final semester. I never imagined that I’d be studying English or wanting to be a teacher, but, at the same time, it kind of feels like that’s what I was meant to do all along.

My aspiration if to apply for the EPIK program and teach English in Korea. I want to do that because I love the culture over there (everything from the music to the food, the festivals to the holidays, the language to the landscape) and because I think it’s an excellent opportunity for me. I am extremely fortunate to know English, and I want to share that good fortune with others.

That said, I tend to overplan everything and get very nervous about things very early. This will be the place for me to document my entire experience, from applying to (hopefully) teaching, and then (fingers crossed!) living in Korea. For now, I’ll end this post, and begin another post with where I am in my journey so far.

We are each other’s night view, each other’s moon. — Kim Namjoon