I’m teaching on JET as a second-year contract ALT. I’m being asked tomorrow whether I want to renew and do a third year from 2024-2025. I’ve literally been agonizing over this choice for a month and a half now, and I still keep switching back and forth on it!
I’m at two schools, one of which is very chill and one of which is a pretty serious academic school in the prefecture I live in. My more serious school I have a very hot and cold relationship with. They’re very kind and skilled with English. I enjoy talking with them. They’ve made dinner for my family when they visited. Stuff like that. But they’re also extremely inflexible about leaving the school, adjusting rules, and taking time off. I asked FOUR MONTHS in advance to take nenkyuu and miss TWO classes (not even classes that were particularly important!) on a single day, and it lead to a round of frantic chatting before it was finally conceded that they would allow it so long as it “never happened again.” There have been times of overwork bad enough that I accumulated 4 full days worth of daikyuu in 2 or 3 weeks. I’m getting very burned out on it, frankly. I could physically do another year, but I know going into this decision that there’s no way I’ll be able to finish a full contract year in this environment without growing more and more resentful.
That being said, I don’t feel mentally prepared to go back my country yet. I don’t have anything lined up for me next. Also, my mental health has taken a massive nosedive in the past few months, and I don’t even feel ready to commit to what my next career move should be (I’m 24, fyi). There’s some more things I want to see in Japan before I’m through. I have a lot of educational qualifications, so I was considering getting some other job like West Gate’s online one that offers visa sponsorship. But rent and moving out and the lower salary and all these millions of adjustments will be a real pain.
I feel super guilty. I feel like I don’t really have any “reason” to break contract. There’s nothing at home. And I’ve discussed whether it’s possible to break contract with my JTEs at the academic school. They all strongly urged me not to do it because it would cause more work for them in April when they’re busy starting the new year. So it doesn’t feel like one of those situations where everyone will understand and be happy for me and write good references and all that.
TLDR: one of the schools I work for is too strict and I can’t take a whole other year of it, but I’m not ready to leave and start real life again either. I have to decide tomorrow!