I’m glad you like adverbs—I adore them; they are the only qualifications I really much respect.
Henry James

It happens to most of us in the end. We gaze at advertisements for jobs in desirable locations or with desirable salaries. We examine the promotion prospects in our own organization. We count our grey hairs and conclude: “There’s nothing for it. I’ll have to get another qual.”

If, like me, you still have bad dreams about overdue assignments or about exams for which you arrive unaccountably naked, the prospect of going back to school is a distressing one. The squandered drinking time, the boredom, the deadlines, the expense! The likelihood of failure. The teachers you know and their ELT qualifications.

• None—strange, chaotic lessons. Teacher talks 99% of the time. Students unimpressed.
• Certificate—teacher knows how to cue a tape. Plays loads of games. Students largely satisfied.
• Diploma—well-crafted, pedagogically sound lessons. Students bored.
• Master’s—lessons represent cutting edge of ELT theory. Students write letters of complaint to DOS.
• Doctorate—teacher reads excerpts from thesis to class and grumbles about insulting salary. Students decamp en masse to rival school.

On the plus side, if you take a course, you can annoy colleagues by dropping names like Krashen in the teachers’ room.

I toyed with the idea of the Delta, but spotted a massive drawback: somebody would get to watch me teach. My lessons mostly consist of me banging my head against the whiteboard, wailing, “Why don’t you understand? It’s perfectly simple!” I have an inkling this is not the authorized approach.

A Master’s sounds good, but you have to pretend to have read some dull books.

Once you have picked a course, you try to persuade your school to pay for it. You go to the boss, who says, “Thank you for coming to see me, Tom—er, Tim—and for sharing your fascinating proposal. Ours is a learning company and recently we have decided all cherished co-workers such as yourself should have Personal Development Plans. With that in mind, this year’s training budget is being invested in a senior management task involving two weeks designing the plans in a hotel in Bali.”

On the whole, it is much simpler to forge a certificate. Most schools only demand photocopies anyway. And why stop at a diploma? I think I shall just start calling myself Dr.

The author has a Ph.D. in Very Difficult Linguistics.