Can You Do This?

Stephanie flies home from Prague with no job, no money, and no plan. The next morning, there's an email: job offer, China, one year.

She's pretty gung-ho. Her parents are restrained. And then her dad pulls her aside - which he didn't do very often - and asks one quiet question: can you actually do this?

This is the story of that conversation. And the slightly embarrassing internal negotiation that followed. (Two seasons. She decided she could do two seasons.)

• 00:00 Intro
• 00:32 The Email from China
• 01:20 Pretty Chill, Actually
• 02:05 Dad Pulls Her Aside
• 03:40 Can You Do This?
• 04:28 The Six Month Math
• 05:15 Okay, We Support You
• 05:40 Until Next Time

Transcript

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Hello, I'm Stephanie Arapian, and this is the Centered Creator Podcast. I tell stories from my creative life, my travels, my many questionable decisions, and what I've learned about being human along the way. This one's about the conversation with my dad that made me actually stop and think. And the very unglamorous map I did to talk myself into moving to China. So when I first told my parents that I had a job offer to go to teach English in China, they didn't freak out, at least not in front of me. They may have had some private freakouts at home between themselves. But they were very restrained in front of me. And so we just had, you know, practical conversations. I had actually gotten this job offer immediately upon landing back in the United States. I had gone off to learn how to be an English teacher. I had gone off to Greece and then tried to find a job in Europe. And that was a little tricky. So I expanded my circle for finding a job and eventually was looking at China. They definitely needed a lot of teachers, and there were a lot of good franchise schools that I was looking at. I ended up having that job interview while I was staying in Prague in my hostel. And then I ran out of money and said, okay, we're going to continue the job search back home. So I had flown back to the United States and was staying with my parents. And the next morning I had the email with the job offer from China. I am a reasonable person. I generally don't jump into crazy things. I take a lot of leaps that are crazy, according to some people, but not without some consideration. And this was a big life change. I knew that, but I was pretty gung-ho about it. I wouldn't have applied if I hadn't thought that I would be cool with it. So I told my parents, and they didn't freak out. They were pretty chill. We got down to the practical points of what was going to happen, what was in the contract, what needed to happen next. And it was actually a conversation with my dad that made me pause. And I don't remember the actual specific words of what he shared with me, but the feeling of that conversation has always stayed with me. He kind of pulled me aside and he shared with me, I have lived in extremely foreign environments. I've been in Asia. I've been in around Asia. And I knew that he had served in the Navy during Vietnam. He'd been to the Philippines, he'd been to Japan. His ship had been posted in and around the Pacific. He didn't really talk about that a lot with me. So I knew that him even bringing it up gave it a lot of weight. And so he said to me, It is very different than what you're used to. It's a different culture, it's a different language. You're not going to understand anything about what's happening around you because you won't be able to read it, listen, or speak or hear. I don't think he was that erudite. He wasn't usually that talkative. But that was the feeling that I was getting from him. It's going to be very different and very informed. But I would like you to take some time to think about can you do this and live in that kind of environment? And if you tell me, after taking some time to think and come back to me and say, I can do this, I'll support you. Or something to that effect. I don't really remember the exact words that he shared with me, but like I said, the feeling of this conversation was a very quiet, personal, private check-in. Are you gonna be okay with this very big, massive life change that's really gonna challenge you in ways I don't know if you're prepared for. And I did. I actually did step away that because he didn't do that very often. So him stepping in, well, I guess I have to take a couple of days to think about this even more than I already had. And I don't know how long it took me, but it definitely took me a couple days to make sure that I was considering all the angles. And it didn't scare me exactly because I still did it, but it definitely made me consider it from a few different angles because I still had some fears. It was definitely going to be a big, crazy, massive move. I'm moving to a country with several billion people in it that I don't speak the language of. And English is not one of their primary languages in general. There are definitely lots of people who can maybe get a buy with English, but nowhere near the kind of comfort and ease that you would have in Europe, say. I comforted myself with the thought that, okay, here are the contract terms. What can I reasonably live with? What can I live with? I had a one-year contract. Uh, I was getting a plane ticket, and they were going to take care of where I would stay. They would provide an apartment, a teacher apartment for me, where I would share a couple of rooms with other teachers. If I stayed at least six months into that contract, they would have considered their investment repaid for the cost of the flight. And technically I could have broken it, the contract at six months. And so I thought to myself, can I make it six months? Can I make it six months? What else is six months? Well, a semester of college? A little more than that. Okay, I can do definitely three months. This is twice that. Oh, two seasons. I can do two seasons. Yeah, I can make that work. So I was realistic about what my tolerances were. And I can do at minimum six months. I can stick out anything for six months. Okay, yes. And so my dad was like, okay, we support you. And it wasn't until much later that I it was a hard day leaving that flight. But he said, okay. And that was okay, yeah, made this decision and I'm going off to do this thing. And I ended up staying six months past my one-year contract and ended up staying overseas for almost three years before I came back to the United States. That was slightly more financially motivated than emotionally motivated. But we had our ways of communicating and keeping in touch with each other and our phone calls with calling cards. Ha ha. That was the beginning of this major life journey that I honestly can't imagine my life without at this point. But yeah, that conversation with my dad really kind of set the tone for checking in with myself about things and the start of my great adventure. Until next time, take care.