“What if this is all I am ever going to be?” I asked my therapist. The question I had been struggling to articulate for weeks hung in the air. Its ridiculousness was not lost on me. My fifth year teaching was drawing to an end. With it, my teaching career was ending, for the second time. I had just given notice to my boss that I would not be returning in the fall.
“What if I am going to struggle, and bounce between jobs for my whole life?” My therapist, the one I sought out for job-related stress, blinked quietly, collecting her thoughts.
I had no plan, you see. I did not leave the job to become a curriculum developer or instructional coach; I left it because it was turning me in to a desperately unhappy person. I left so that I could be healthy in body and mind again. I left to save my relationship. I left for many valid reasons, but for someone who was a high achiever, no plan can feel a lot like failure.
I never had a very sharp focus on what I wanted to do with my life—a dream to run at, so to speak. Gifted and talented programs in elementary school, honors track through high school, and impressive college acceptances convinced me that I was bound for something great. What that was, I did not know. I supposedly excelled in writing, with the SAT score to back it up. Journalism perhaps? A freshman writing class soon knocked that out of my system. Law was something that vaguely interested me, but those looks of misery on the faces of the law students on campus made law school somehow unappealing.
Half a dozen service trips and volunteer placements later, and I had finally found it, my calling, my raison d’être: inner city education! This is what my greatness was destined for: helping others achieve greatness! I was going to single-handedly uplift a generation of children, help them break their cycle of poverty. I was going to be on the front lines of social change. In my mind, I was a few steps away from advising the president on education policy. Schools would be named after me. I had finally found my calling! After being accepted to the requisite prestigious volunteer program, affiliated with the prestigious graduate school of education, I moved myself into the depths of a city I had never even visited.
I doubt there are many things in this world more humbling than being a first year teacher, except possibly being a clueless first year teacher, without an education degree, from a privileged background, in the inner city. I struggled in a way no “gifted and talented” child is ever used to struggling.
I dogged it out, year after year, slowly improving my craft. Occasionally dreaming of the day when I would found my own charter network or lab school and reform education in America. But mostly I cried at night from stress and exhaustion. I worried that Tobias was going to get beat up on the way to school or that Janea was not going to have dinner that night. I lived, breathed, and dreamed my job. And. It. Sucked.
Finally around age twenty-six, I looked up. I realized that all those friends I had lost touch with when I dove into urban education were starting to get married. I looked left and right at the women (because they were all women) around me and realized that they were all single, all childless, all driven by their work. I asked myself, “Is this the life I want?” and heard back a resounding “NO!”
So I packed it up and headed back home. The “gifted and talented” high achiever moved back in with mom and dad, adding to the list of humbling life experiences. Slowly I got back on my feet. Slowly a romance developed. A nice nine to five desk job—that truly ended at five—made time for things like holding hands and cooking together.
There was a quiet nagging, however. It grew louder over time:
“Did I give up too easily?”
“Am I wasting my potential?”
“Am I not doing enough?”
I went back to the classroom. Denial can be a powerful force. So can ego.
“It will be different this time.” I assured my fiancé as I accepted the offer, “I know what I am doing this time around; it won’t be so hard.” It was a different inner city, a leadership position, with an impressive stipend.
I cried after the first day of school. My fiancé held me, totally bewildered and helpless. He watched me from that position of helplessness over the next few months as I pulled back from everything in my life but work.
The only way I had ever learned to work as a teacher was at a sprint pace, for a marathon distance. I did not know how to do it any other way. After all, it was not just teaching, I was reforming urban education. To give any less than one hundred percent would be failing that mission. Lesson planning until two a.m. and waking up at six is a lot more trying when you have a partner checking up on you, who wants to actually see you, and who will know if you just ate cereal for dinner. Waking up, unable to breathe from a panic attack, can be unsettling for the person sharing your bed.
It turns out that it was different this time. I was not better at teaching, or balancing my life (more humility for me, thanks), what was different is that it is not just me anymore. What drove me out of my workaholic cave the first time was the desire for partnership, for a family of my own. I got what I asked for. We couldn’t build this baby family now with one of us barely present.
I began to dream again of a simpler life; one where my job was part of my day, not all of it. A life where my job was part, but not all, of my identity. A life where my job would have allowed me to actually plan my own wedding (thanks mom). I missed cooking with my partner. I missed holding hands and just being together.
So I decided to quit—for my quality of life, for my husband’s quality of life. I am not going to be the next big education reformer. I am less sure than ever that I know what education reform should look like.
“What is it that you want to do?” my therapist asked, finally. I have no idea, for now I just need a job.
