Date: 14 December 2004

Greetings, dear friends and colleagues!

This is the REAL The Arrogant One -- the aging, sardonic maven of our ever-so-great eslteachersboard.com. Albeit it was not I who recently posted under my moniker, I had been planning to write again before the end of the year. In the interim, I have kept up with some of the more recent posts of both the veteran and new contributors to the Board. No, I can't say I've EVER been to Tibet! Actually I've been pretty busy here in Los Angeles of late teaching TOEFL and TOEIC in both an established language school and privately.

GOOD NEWS: Commencing in a very short time, I will begin a new regular column on the ESL Teachers Board concerning the concepts and deeper feelings of us "ESL-nicks," entitled Confessions of an ESL Instructor, to deeply explore a teacher's sentiments -- good, bad, or indifferent -- in regard to his/her experiences in ESL. I propose to write about YOUR emotions and reflect upon YOUR opinions of what this industry has become, but in a more objective manner than ever before. This simply means that with each grievance there must be an accompanying gesture of remediation. To merely state that you dislike some aspect of ESL -- e.g., the management, your fellow teachers, the students, the culture, etc. -- will not, in itself, be deemed worthy of mention. This will also be a great opportunity for you silent sufferers out there to express your discontent, but with the proviso that you, too, are able to suggest a plan that should be invoked in order to avoid such disaster in future. As many of you are aware, I, myself, was made to feel idiotic and worthless via an incorrect choice of and failure to more carefully check into one of those foreign dream jobs. However, following an acceptable period of lamentation (and profanity) over my financial loss and the attack upon my gigantic Leo/B-positive ego, I decided to get off the floor and more dispassionately analyze the true cause of my misery. Perhaps not all answers can be had via the suggested airing out process (the column), but we can at least give it a try. Here's where to mail your comments:

ConfessFessup@aol.com

I hope to hear from many of you after the holidays while, in the interim, let me wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Your friend,

The (ORIGINAL) Arrogant One