I certainly wouldn't recommend it for all sorts of learning. It worked for me because I had literally gambled everything on it - if I dropped out or got kicked out, I'd be 17k in debt living in the most expensive city in america with almost no savings. Failure wasn't an option. Furthermore, my fallback options were shitty. 40k/year doing sales or recruitment, busting my ass to reach 6 figures, being stepped on the whole way up the ladder. Maybe teaching english abroad, end up being that 40 year old white dude trapped in Taiwan, stuck every night in the foreigner bar and droning about what could have been. Nope no no thank you.

> Maybe teaching english abroad, end up being that 40 year old white dude trapped in Taiwan, stuck every night in the foreigner bar and droning about what could have been.

At 5 years short of 40, doesn't sound half-bad if you cut out both the teaching and the bars =) there's gotta be worse "traps" than Taiwan, it's a comely-enough place, and one of the few capital cities in the region where cycling is as conveniently practical as it is in Western capitals

So I guess you should do something that makes you happy (good for you!), but please do consider that actions actually have other implications than money.

The fact that you can make more money making webpages than teaching some poor kid english is mostly sad.

There's probably not too many "poor kids" in Taiwan.. as for the 20-something "English teachers" roaming the likes of Cambodia, Laos etc, unless actual NGO workers they're overwhelmingly teaching the better-off locals' offspring for comparatively slim pay --- more than accounted for by incredibly low and highly tweakable cost-of-living, lots of public holidays, low-to-zero minimum standards (other than "a proper attire" ie dress shirt, and saving everyone's faces at all times) --- which when motivated gives them great freedom to evolve their own didactic approaches and when not (such things ebb & flow after all) easily let's them approach the task at hand in a very laidback, relaxed, low-effort manner.

Not saying it's the best model for all societies, but it's assuredly not without it's charms for all parties involved. Different flow.

> The fact that you can make more money making webpages than teaching some poor kid english is mostly sad.

You're right in a sense; things that matter the most seem to pay the least. Teachers shape our kids tremendously and yet it's common they need donations just to buy simple school supplies.

Now I'm not sure it's fair to necessarily compare the two but it is still sad.

Yes, it's not fair: I made the comparison because the parent painted the picture of teaching English abroad as a "loser" job.

And that's ok, and you don't need to do that, but please do not assume that people who actually do such things do them out of desperation for money.

At least though it's not without merit that this glaring gap between what people claim to value "most" and where funding flows the most remains as visible as it is. Reality is the best reality-check for most of us. ;)

Well, I won't disparage those that are actually teaching poor kids, but in Taiwan I was teaching the top 25%, aka those that can afford to attend a cram school. I was making 2x the monthly salary working 20 hours a week that your average college educated Taiwanese grad was making working 60-70hrs a week.