Okay so I don't even know how to start this post without mentioning this, so here it is in the first sentence of it - this is my 100th blog post, which is absolutely insane to me. I knew I wanted to write about something important for my 100th post and I figured this was quite an important thing to talk about. It's also an incredibly apt topic since this entire blog started because back in 2019, while I was in the first year as a newly qualified teacher, I was finding it incredibly difficult - I didn't hate it yet, but I didn't really enjoy it like I thought I would, and I found it so stressful. I still remember the moment I was sat on my bedroom floor doing my make up, talking to one of my best friends about not enjoying my job and they suggested that I started a fashion/beauty blog as something to do in my spare time to take my mind off of the stress I faced during the working week. If you are someone who enjoys my blog, take a moment to raise a glass to Beth to thank them for their idea. Here I am 100 posts later writing about how I did eventually quit that job and found one that I love instead.
I also felt like I wanted to write about this as I'm about to turn 27 and I know that this is such a weird time for so many people my age - it's a time where some of us know exactly what we're doing career wise, and some of us are taking life as it comes knowing that it will all come together one day, (it will), so it can absolutely be a confusing time. It was certainly a confusing time for me when I quit the job that I had studied incredibly hard for, for four years, a few weeks before my 26th birthday - that's a long time to work for something only to find out that you hate it a year into it, but that's what happened to me.
Now I don't want to sit here and just bash teaching because I recognise that my experience is not universal. It's a worthwhile career for a lot of people, and I know so many teachers who absolutely love what they do and will continue to do it forever, but it wasn't right for me. A lot of things happened around the same time period in December 2020, my husband was made redundant due to covid budget cuts, just before he ended up having a life-changing surgery, my best friend at the time suddenly woke up one morning and decided he was done with me for absolutely no good reason, not to mention the fact that it is a very heartbreaking thing to realise that something you studied so hard for is causing your mental health to absolutely plummet. I don't think I'd ever been as unhappy as I was during the last few weeks that I was a teacher, nor have I been that unhappy since. I was absolutely in one new Hell after another, and I am incredibly grateful to my best friends and family who stuck with me during that time because it was so miserable, and if you know someone who has been through a traumatic life change, please be by their side and check on them as much as you can because it got scary pretty fast for me.
Something that I never would've recommended to anyone, and I still don't think I would if you can help it, is doing what I did and quitting a job without a job lined up to go to. I think this was the first time in my life where I did that - I've left other jobs knowing I'd been interviewing for things and secured a new job during my notice period, or had a university degree waiting for me on the other side of my quitting.
If you can have something lined up and waiting for you, I recommend that, but due to the place that I was in mentally, I really just went to work every day for my 12 week notice period, came home, finished my work, and slept. I didn't have the energy to be looking for what was next - I was just focussed on getting through the 'now', (partially why I was leaving in the first place, I didn't have time for anything else). I am entirely grateful for my husband because I literally had a breakdown one evening and told him that I had to quit my job the next day - it was as sudden as that, and instead of saying all of the things that he could've in that moment 'but we have a wedding to pay for in five months', 'but I don't have a job right now', 'but how will we afford rent', an endless seas of 'buts', and 'what ifs' that could've come out of his mouth, and none of them did. He said 'okay', and we went from there. I could write an entire post on what having an amazing support system of people who actually care about you can do, but that's for another day. I quit the next day, and it was definitely hard for a while but here we are a year later, we've had our wedding ceremony, and we're almost finished with planning our wedding reception for next year. Things do work out with hard work, an incredible family, (and chosen family), and a whole lot of positive thinking and manifestation.
I'm very happy in the line of work I'm in now, (and shout out to best friends who let you know about openings in their company because that's how I found it!). I still work in education, and honestly, I can't deny that my teaching experience was a massive help in me getting this position as it's what I drew from in order to answer the interview questions in the amount of detail that I could. I will never bash teaching as a career as it did get me where I am today, but I'm happier not being a teacher and that's the most important thing. I don't have to deal with unruly teenagers who hate me, and their parents who blamed me for anything that they feasibly could, and nor do I ever work past my eight hour workday, I don't even think about work before 8am, and I don't work past 4pm. Ever. That was the biggest shock to me once I left - I was honestly thinking about work 25/8 before this, I started working on the bus on the way into work because that was the only way to keep up with it, and I brought work home and marked test papers way beyond 3pm - (for me, it was more like midnight most of the time) - which is the time that everyone thinks teachers stop working at - it's not. Every single teacher is a hero, and I do not know how they do it. I am in awe of you all. I honestly live for logging off of my work laptop at 4pm and not thinking about it again until the next morning - all I ever thought about during my teaching career was how nothing I did was ever good enough and how I needed to get up earlier the next day/stay at school later/stay up working later into the night the next evening to do better. It killed me, and I wasn't made for it.
As more and more people found out that I was leaving, there was this narrative that I kept being fed which was something similar to how I was so new to the career, and so young, both of which were true and I absolutely will not deny that. I am still young and you could argue that I was too young to know it gets better as a career because I definitely didn't stay in it long enough to hate it the way people who leave after ten years end up doing, but I didn't want to give any more of my life to something that I didn't like, and I don't think that's a fair thing to tell someone when they tell you that a job is hurting them mentally. Understand that people know themselves better than you do, and let them move on if they need to. I kept hearing that it gets easier the longer you do it, but I didn't want to depend on that. What if I still didn't like it after two years, five, ten? Then what? I'd then have spent ten years waking up and dreading going to work on particular days because of a certain class/year group I had to teach that day, and I just couldn't live like that anymore.
There is a TikTok that found me which was really meaningful when I was dealing with people questioning my decision. I'll link it here but I'm also going to type it out because it was honestly the most validating thing to hear, and you might need to read it too. It goes like this:
'One year into being a lawyer, I knew with 100% certainty that I hated being a lawyer. I went to my friends and family and they all told me the same thing: "You just spent eight years going to school to become a lawyer. It would be so stupid to quit now.", so I didn't quit. I spent over 50 years practicing law. 50 miserable years. It could've only been one miserable year, but I made it 50. My advice? Don't continue to do something that makes you unhappy just because you've invested time into it.'
If you think you're in a career that you hate, read/watch it again and then do something about it if you can - I promise you that it's worth it.
Another thing that I love about leaving teaching is not having my annual leave days chosen for me by the government. I could take an annual leave day on a random day every week if I wanted to, or take time off because I want to go to a wedding, or time off after my own wedding, or because I had my Pfizer vaccine and my arm hurt - it's just the best. We went on our minimoon in Devon in September this year and it felt like the most rebellious thing ever, and it was honestly so fun and it's so freeing to be able to take time off whenever I want to, (within reason). Saying that though, one thing I definitely forgot is that non-teachers don't automatically get Christmas time off if they don't save up their annual leave for it. Because I started my job in April, I started with less annual leave days anyway, and due to this, and all of the other incredible events I took annual leave off for this year, I have now ended up with two days off between now and the new year, but you know what? I'm okay with it, because I definitely will not be marking test papers during those days off because every single one of my classes had their end of term assessments on the same week before school broke up, like I used to. I will be chilling with my family doing absolutely nothing, and I can't wait. Note to self: book off my 28th birthday immediately as soon as my annual leave counter resets.
I'm not sure entirely how to end this post, but I want to reiterate that teaching was damaging for me, and that I am not pushing that conclusion on to anyone else, nor would I ever because that would be a silly thing to do. While making notes for this post, I've been thinking a lot about if what I do now is my 'dream job', and I think I've come to the conclusion that it isn't, but not because I don't love it, because I absolutely do - but because I don't think I dream of labour anymore - I don't attach my self-worth to a job, and all of my spare time is not spent thinking how to become better at my job, I do that during working hours only. My spare time is now spent having an incredible time, where I can spend the money that my job helps me to earn, because I actually have time to spend that money now, on seeing my friends, and enjoying my life.
My job funds my dream life, my life does not revolve around my job.
That, in conclusion, is the best glow up I could've ever asked for. If you had spoken to me a year ago, at the tender age of 25, with a mere month left of my notice period, knowing that I was in the worst depression I'd ever been in and that I would likely spend the next few months incredibly worried I would not be able to afford our wedding anymore - if you asked her what she hoped her life would look like now - I would have said this. I would have wanted everything I have now, to be almost 27, moving through life with grace, with real friends, and while I'm still working everything out, I'm incredibly happy and hopeful while figuring things out instead of running scared. That's what I would've wanted my life to look like, and I will never stop being grateful that I have that now.
xo
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