in 2008, after graduating from The George Washington Unviersity with an impressive degree and great experience, but a 2.6 GPA, I moved to Los Angeles to work for a corporate recruiter in finance. Within a few months of me working there, the company down-sized due to market conditions and I was let go. For a few weeks I looked for work but nobody was hiring and I was forced to move back to Philadelphia to my parents' home.
The following January after over fifty applications to firms around Philadelphia, I began looking for work in China teaching English, at the recommendation of my university's career center. I took a position to teach English in Hefei, Anhui, a city about 3 hours west by train from Shanghai. I moved there in February and worked for a year.
Frustrated by small salary, I made frequent attempts to do more in order to contribute value to the company. This caused tension between me and the center manager, although the franchise owner was impartial. My contract was not renewed and I took up a position at Anhui University of Architecture for the Spring term in 2010. I was pressed by money, still, and constantly stressed - having no savings and not even enough spare cash to purchase a plane ticket home in case of family emergency, sudden work closure, or some other disaster. After securing a teaching position at the University of Science and Technology of China, also in Hefei, I took initiative to work for a month with Web International in Nanjing in July, and returned to the USA in August for a vacation - my first time back in the US for 20 months.
In September of 2011, I took up the teaching position at USTC in Hefei, leading an extracurricular debate club. Money remained tight. I went far beyond the efforts of my fellow English teachers in decorating the classroom I was assigned, posting a picturesque compilation of images and quotes in English on a world map in an effort to encourage students to see the English language as a tool that would give them greater access to international lifestyles and business. I travelled to Tianjin for a summit on Clean Technology and Sustainable Cities, and on returning to Hefei, sought out opportunity for further collaboration at the university. I also had an article published in a prominent online blog for green technology and sustainable development.
Our teaching team came under scrutiny for a variety of factors. One of the other teachers was found to be growing marijuana on his balcony and was asked to leave - he fled the country to North America. A former colleague from Aston - an English teacher at a primary school in the city - conspired with my flatmate to convince the manager of foreign teachers at the university that I should be put in a sanitarium. The American Consulate in Shanghai was notified and they decided to notify my mother, who flew to Hefei. After a few weeks in the sanitarium, I was released, and was able to teach several classes at the close of the academic term before flying home to Philadelphia for the holidays. This series events was extraordinary and I found myself in situations where others exerted control over my life despite my will - I found there was nothing I could do. I returned to Hefei in January to complete the academic year successfully.
After securing a teaching position with the Wall Street Institute in Shanghai, I enrolled in the University of Cambridge's program organized via International House Bangkok and hosted at the British International School in Phuket for a Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults. I spent August on holiday in Southeast Asia and returned to China to begin teaching in Shanghai in September. My partner, a Chilean woman, who had studied at Anhui University in Hefei, enrolled in Fudan for a semester on scholarship from the Confucius Institute. By December, she began looking for English teaching positions and had to visit Hong Kong several times to arrange a working visa. The process stressed our relationship to a breaking point, although we continued to date for the rest of the 2012 year. I returned to Philadelphia in May of 2012 for 10 days to spend time with family, celebrate my mother's birthday, and attend my brother's graduation. At the end of 2012, my partner's teaching contract complete, she chose to return to Chile and I remained in Shanghai alone.
By that time I had began entrepreneurial non-English teaching work. Initially I had joined a financial services startup, and then subsequently a commercial real estate Sino-Swedish joint venture. I was paid RMB 7000, barely enough to cover living expenses. The company forced me to complete all the paperwork for the visa independently, which involved multiple trips to Hong Kong - a process that, by February of 2013, left me exhausted financially. I remained in Hong Kong from February through June, returning to Shanghai to continue work in June and July, and then leaving the company and moving to Hong Kong full-time in August to work at the University of Hong Kong in the Academic Liaison Section - the registrar. I lived with a friend I had met the previous Spring in a small apartment in Sham Shui Po, often sleeping on a couch or a floor, as there was not a full-sized bed besides the single bed my friend had in her room. My colleagues all lived in decent apartments, many with family and friends. My financial situation completely exhausted, I underperformed at work and received no compassion from my manager or the other senior office staff. The pay was decent and another month or two would have seen my performance rise considerably. I was released a week before Christmas, having hardly saved any money.
A small English language consultancy, Eureka Language Education, hired me to work freelance in 2014. They underpaid me at an insulting rate. I offered to work additional roles for them - including assistance with managerial duties, digital media development, and curriculum development, but they ignored my offers. Instead, I steadily grew weaker and less competent during the year. In the Fall, I began working at SKH Chu Oi primary school in Kwai Chung. The English consultancy took nearly 60% of the salary that Chu Oi paid to the teaching position, leaving me with hardly enough to cover transportation costs for the hour-and-a-half daily commute, food and accommodation. I lived on a makeshift shack on the roof of a small village house on Lamma Island. The accommodation was comfortable, but the living condition afforded by the salary was detestable.
I had began working entrepreneurially on a small business in January of 2014. I attended events as frequently as my poorly funded energy levels would allow me throughout the year. In 2015 I enrolled in the Founder Institute, a series of workshops and seminars for founders of small businesses. I also began working for Wall Street Institute in Hong Kong. While they paid me quite a small amount, it was decent wage on the side until SKH Chu Oi decided that they were not comfortable with the teaching arrangement between the English consultancy and myself. They released me at the end of February. Hardly making any money, my living condition dwindled over the Summer and I began packing to move out, looking for a better situation, in July of 2015. When my flatmate found that I was packing, she became enraged and assaulted me, screaming, and demanded I moved out by midnight that night. I was left homeless, living on the street with my luggage kept under some boats on Lamma Island. With my experience at the Founder Institute, applications to several prominent grant programs, and activity with InvestHK, the government institution overseeing startups in Hong Kong, I expected investment that would enable me to live decently and run my business. The investment never came. Instead, the government began scrutinizing my every move with heavy suspicion. My visa was to expire in October. I enrolled at the University of Hong Kong with money from my family for a graduate program beginning in September. I expected some investment from angel investment networks - which I expected would occur unannounced and with some amount of unexpected speed. No investment came. Out of money and exhausted, I took academic leave from HKU and returned to Philadelphia for the winter holiday.
Now I am living with my parents outside Philadelphia. For the past 8 months, I have attempted to find work and been unsuccessful. I am in debt nearly USD$50,000 to my parents, my university, and my bank. I have worked tirelessly in China, abroad, to maintain a strong image despite poor pay, poor management, and all cultural differences. These conditions were forced on me prematurely - I left the United States with no savings in the first place, and my condition since graduating university had been quite impoverished.
I am stuck in a poverty trap.
Please help.
I require money, and that is all, to fund the development of my business to the point where I can achieve profitability or to move closer to Philadelphia in order to find work.
I do not want to wait until my parents both pass away for this to happen.
Please help.
I do not even have enough money to confidently begin new work. My financial position causes my personality to be extremely volatile, and I can maintain a hard character at work but to be cordial in the face of people who have saved some money and have job security is difficult.
My intention is good - my character strong. I only need money to be able to live a strong and meaningful life. I want to help other people. I want to be able to work and make money so that I can do good things with my life. I want to be able to contribute positively to society.
Please help.
rhtbfgtha@yahoo.com
