Phil Hadikin lives in Daejeon, South Korea and hails from Castlegar, BC, Canada.
I was finishing my first one-year contract at Woosong University (WSU) and was debating whether or not I was going to re-sign for another year. It was late December and I had to make my decision quickly because the deadline date for my contract renewal was approaching in a few weeks. One afternoon as I was checking my "snail mail” mailbox at the office, the Director of the Woosong Language Institute also came by to check his mailbox. He asked my how well I knew the Russian language. That was an "out of the blue" question to ask, I thought. I replied that I was fluent in Russian, as I was an ethnic Russian-Canadian. I asked him why he wanted to know and he replied that Woosong was opening a new program in the Railroad Department that was going to be based on teaching the Russian language to WSU Railroad Engineering students. Then, he asked me if I would be interested in the job. I thought about it for a moment and then replied that I would take the job. The next day, I told WSU that I would re-sign for another year.
Well, that was 14 years ago. Today, I still teach at WSU, but am not fully involved with the Russian side of it. Someone else teaches Russian and it’s to nursing majors. In 2005 WSU signed a partnership agreement with FESTU (Far East Transport University) from Khabarovsk, Russia. WSU requested a Russian teacher to come and teach the Russian language. That teacher agreed to come for a year, but after 11 years she is still teaching Russian at WSU and, oh yeah, we got married and have two sons. I am still working in the Railroad Department but now I only teach English to my students. It's interesting how things work out. As the saying goes, when one door closes another one opens.
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I was finishing my first one-year contract at Woosong University (WSU) and was debating whether or not I was going to re-sign for another year. It was late December and I had to make my decision quickly because the deadline date for my contract renewal was approaching in a few weeks. One afternoon as I was checking my "snail mail” mailbox at the office, the Director of the Woosong Language Institute also came by to check his mailbox. He asked my how well I knew the Russian language. That was an "out of the blue" question to ask, I thought. I replied that I was fluent in Russian, as I was an ethnic Russian-Canadian. I asked him why he wanted to know and he replied that Woosong was opening a new program in the Railroad Department that was going to be based on teaching the Russian language to WSU Railroad Engineering students. Then, he asked me if I would be interested in the job. I thought about it for a moment and then replied that I would take the job. The next day, I told WSU that I would re-sign for another year.
Well, that was 14 years ago. Today, I still teach at WSU, but am not fully involved with the Russian side of it. Someone else teaches Russian and it’s to nursing majors. In 2005 WSU signed a partnership agreement with FESTU (Far East Transport University) from Khabarovsk, Russia. WSU requested a Russian teacher to come and teach the Russian language. That teacher agreed to come for a year, but after 11 years she is still teaching Russian at WSU and, oh yeah, we got married and have two sons. I am still working in the Railroad Department but now I only teach English to my students. It's interesting how things work out. As the saying goes, when one door closes another one opens.
If you have a networking story to share, please send it to [email protected].
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