Appreciate any feedback and pointing in the right direction. Long story short, I'm 37, had a divorce about a year and a half ago and some other longer term contracts will be coming to an end this October. As a result, I suddenly find myself as committment & obligation free as someone can possibly get at my age…it's basically just my car.
Remembered this program as something I wanted to do when I was ~22, but got too distracted in trying to keep my head above water in the Great Recession fallout.
Anyway, I was wondering how viable applying to this program is (or if there's one that's more suitable), looking at the eligibility requirements, I meet all of them.
Few caveats: Bachelor's, with a focus on international study – but, I was a terrible student (~2.something) later diagnosed with ADHD that explains at least some of it. But, best performance by far was study abroad in Japan time. So, at least Japanese and that portion were the only things that earned a 3.5-4.0.
-Been self employed for ~8 years, so have a modest stable income that can continue to produce without my direct involvement.
-No formal teaching experience or desire to do so in, say, US education – although I am a public speaker and have been teaching tech to small business owners for ~8 years through workshops and such, and ironically, with writing (typically copywriting for websites, etc) in English.
-Can punch above my weight when it comes to English (writing) credentials – as I've got a few published columns in some major US publications.
-Managed the US distrubution for a small Japanese company back in the early 2010s – so been back and forth a few times.
I've long understood the random nature of placement in the program. Understand the salary basically equates to around ~21k USD now-a-days (jeez, I wish we had this exchange rate back in the 2010s, would've made import a lot easier). Don't mind basically living out of a suitcase.
More or less it seems like a relatively fun avenue to go down and spend a year or two in a country I've long loved. Only real concern here is that for obvious reasons this program seems weighted more towards recent graduates. Have a good enough relationship still with my old Japanese professor I could get one recommendation from them, the other I could pull out from somewhere, but there's not exactly advisors to call (although a very extensive public record of work / accolades / proof of resume-type stuff). So it's really about whether or not the program is a good fit.
by fwazeter