I'll be doing this ESL thing for a while, hopefully for the next twenty years or even longer.

For me, the hardest part of teaching ESL has been all the 'rude surprises', such as the shock that in Thailand where I teach, cheaters in classrooms are as common as raindrops.

I've gotten acclimated to the fact that most students in any given class at my school are deficient in ability because they were allowed to get away with cheating in the past. Sure, it pissed me off at first, but I realized I had to accept it if I was going to make it through my contract.

Yes, it's a shame I have inherited students who've been in English upwards of nine years (!) who still don't know the difference between 'I', 'me', 'my', and 'mine', but that's how it is here.

I just wish my TEFL outfit would have warned me first. Thailand's cheating wouldn't have been a rude surprise for me because I would have gone elsewhere to teach. But, I'm here and now I have to limp to the end....an end that won't come a second too soon.

I'm dumping Thailand. I'm not dumping teaching ESL.