What a Star TOEIC Teacher Told Job Seekers in 2012

I remember the 2000s in South Korea for the mood around the 2002 World Cup and the sense that opportunities were opening. By the early 2010s, finding work had come to mean gathering a list of credentials just to get a hearing.

The pandemic and the economic strain that followed made the mood of the early 2020s feel different to me. When I went back to advice from the preceding decade, I could hear how much confidence it still placed in trying harder.

A book from the credential race

Yoo Soo-youn’s book came out in 2012. It is hard to separate the way she addresses a reader from the period in which so many young people felt they needed somebody to tell them how to get moving.

Yoo had become a prominent teacher of TOEIC, a test many South Korean applicants took to show employers their English proficiency. She was also known for speaking directly to the people in her classes about their lives.

The book recounts studying business at Kangnam University, going to Australia to improve her English, pursuing a master’s in Britain and returning to South Korea to teach TOEIC.

The test behind Yoo’s public voice

I studied English mostly on my own and never took her classes. I remember seeing her TOEIC books in stores after I had already stopped needing the test.

At the time, an English score was among the first things many job seekers thought they had to produce. A teacher who could help with that score could become a voice they heard every day.

The advice she brought to young readers

Yoo looks back at her own life and at the people who came to her classes. A message runs through the accounts: take a difficult thing seriously enough to prepare for it.

She remembers taking over the family shop when her parents’ business was struggling. It is one of the places where her advice has a set of circumstances behind it.

Yoo values initiative and careful preparation. Failure is possible either way. She asks readers to do what they can to make the attempt worth making.

When you have prepared enough to begin

Waiting until every detail feels settled can mean never beginning. Yoo wants the reader to recognize when they have done enough preparation to take the next step.

I thought of publishing the blog. If I waited for every piece to feel finished in every possible way, I would still have a folder full of drafts. Posting regularly helped me learn and eventually led to my selection as a Power Blogger.

Crabs in a bucket

The book invokes “crab mentality.” The expression imagines crabs in a bucket pulling down another that tries to climb out.

• See also — Crab mentality in OWL Dictionary

Yoo uses that image to describe people who respond to someone else’s progress by trying to bring the person back into line. I read it as a question about what we do when a colleague or friend tries something we would not try ourselves.

She wants readers to notice how much attention they give to that kind of response, and how much of it they can turn back toward their own work.

There is no “someday” in the week

The joke is that the days of the week do not include “someday.” It works because there is always another ordinary day available for the first thing you meant to do.

Taking a small task seriously

Yoo returns to a maxim about doing common things uncommonly well. The part I remember is the scale of the work. It could mean getting a small task right when there is little reason to expect anyone to notice.

The standard for a bigger job often begins with the way you do the smaller ones.

Giving yourself a chance even then

Near the end, the book repeats a line it attributes to Alvin Toffler. I took it as a provocation about acting when you already expect to look foolish.

• If you are going to look foolish either way, give yourself a chance to win.

I thought less about winning every time than about the choice to attempt something after embarrassment has ceased to be a useful reason to hold back.

The book’s voice can be severe. I kept the part that asked me to prepare carefully enough that when a chance arrived, I knew what to do with it.

Book details

Yoo Soo-youn’s Hard Words

Author

Yoo Soo-youn

Published

July 16, 2012

ISBN-13

9788960865488

View on YES24

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