My Background: Part 3, Return to America

Well, almost as soon as I arrived in Japan, everything did change. I met Bongsu at the guest house for foreigners where I stayed while looking for an apartment in Tokyo. We connected by talking about her native Korea, and I quickly decided on a second year in Japan to stay around her. During that second year, we got engaged and decided to come back to America together, where I might find some career prospects that would provide more fulfillment, more long-term prospects and more opportunities for advancement beyond a tiny fixed annual salary increase. That decision was not easy, since it meant she would be leaving the doctoral program in Visual Communication Design that she'd started at Tokyo National University of Fine Arts, but we figured we'd give America one chance to prove to us whether she really was the Land of Opportunity.

So began a long six months of staying with my parents again (now in Duck, North Carolina) and looking for any job that had anything to do with teaching, international experience, training programs or the like. A lot of the jobs I applied to were extreme long shots - things I knew I didn't meet the written qualifications for, but that I thought I would be able to do well if they randomly decided to interview me anyway, and that looked like a lot of fun. The other half, on which I spent much more time customizing my resume and polishing the cover letters, I regarded as serious possibilities.

It was during this time, on September 8, 2007, that Bongsu and I were married in Duck.

In trying to see what my connections could do for me, I spoke on the phone with a distant relative whose career as a diplomat has been very successful. That conversation, along with intense discussions with my wife, convinced me that I might have a chance at my dream job after all, and so the longest of the long-shot application was when I submitted the online registration for the Foreign Service Officer Test. At the time, despite Bongsu's overwhelming confidence in me, I didn't really expect anything to come of it; I was actually surprised they even let me register for the written test (considering how my "slacker" phase had affected my college GPA).

When the time came to take that exam, I had just reached the crest of my job-hunting - I'd been to several interviews in the past few weeks, one of which looked like they would be making me an offer soon, and another of which had even already done so. Partly because the salary was better but mostly because I knew I would enjoy working there, I had already accepted that offer, as a Continuing Education Provider Services Manager at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.

To be continued!