Pre-Departure

It always seems customary to start blogs off with a short introduction followed by the current state of affairs then the arbitrary interest grabbing ending paragraph. 

Lets start then.

My name is Joel Pinkney Tillman IV. I am a 24 year old male with a rich history behind him. Without meaning to sound condescending I have experienced much more than most people my age.We wont go into the trials and tribulations except for one fact: I have been on the move since I was born. With such said it has left me in a strange state of mind but we will get to that in the current state of affairs paragraph. I just graduated from Florida Southern College in horrid Lakeland, Florida, USA. I scored in the top 25% of the nation on my major field tests ensuring my place in a decent graduate school. I am single and have no kids (thank god.) Most of my friends have moved away to peruse a good life (I presume) with a few exceptions.

When I was in my last semester of college I was in a state of panic. They say college ends too fast for your mind to prepare and they are right. I had no idea what came next. Sure I knew I wanted to peruse graduate school, which is a necessity now-a-days, but had nothing lined up. I had no real idea what jobs I wanted to look for nor which state to look for them! This, I'm told, is a natural feeling for most college graduates. Just look at the hit movie "The Graduate".  I felt like I had an idea of who I was but, like most of my past, I felt lost and slightly lonely. I personally like this feeling to an extent and feel like you should feel this way at my age but I digress.

One day I saw a distant friend of mine post something on Facebook. This something was a blog he was keeping on his trip to South Korea. Intrigued, I started reading the blog in its entirety. I have always had this romantic idea in my head of teaching abroad but never saw it as a valuable option (as I am a Finance Major and not a Gen Ed.) After looking through his blog archives I became fascinated. I started contacting him asking her/him (it was a couple) all about the process, what it was like there, teaching, etcetc. The more I found out the more I felt something growing inside of me. This had been there all along but it was my adventure spirit taking over once again. Cutting to the chase I started the application process knowing this was the next chapter of my life with no other option.

Fast forward to now. I just got my E2 work vista stamp and my flight booked today. I leave on Sunday and after a 20 hour flight will be in South Korea. I signed a year contract and fully plan on being there longer. After South Korea comes China then Japan. I will be traveling all over each said country and be diving head first into whatever adventure they dare throw at me; and I will conquer each one.

I still feel lost and lonely (a pure romantic way) in my life to an extent. I have a gut feeling that this trip is something that will change me, something that will shape me into something I was suppose to be. I christen this blog with this post because I know down the line my children will want to know how it all began and I can tell them I started to become the man I was meant to be in the most unlikely state; lost.








Footnote: I will be updating this blog with the process, from start to finish, of how one goes about getting a job in South Korea and why they would want to in the first place. This will not be only just about the adventures of one man but information on the places, people, events, process, etcetc.