On my second to last day of school, my department took me out to lunch to celebrate.
It was what you'd expect -- lots of hugs and toasts and congratulations as I change careers. There were conversations about where I'm going, and why I decided to leave, and not a few people mentioned they'd never once thought I was unhappy. One colleague called me a lifer, like teaching is a prison sentence.
That right there tells you a lot about my mindset.
When someone inevitably asked what I'm going to miss about teaching, it took me embarrassingly long to answer. Eventually though, after kicking around about a dozen things I won't miss, I settled on the people.
It's the truth: I will miss my colleagues and friends at Herbert High. It's been a great place to learn and build a skill set, an awesome place to make friends, and for a lot of people, a place to spend their entire careers. Many of my colleagues in my department have been there for a decade or longer, and they are happy there. I will miss all that.
And this stands in stark contrast to my new job, where I will know no one.
That's the most important part, which I keep reminding myself: I have a job. It's not the job I thought I'd have, the one I've been writing about for months. That job vanished into a haze of office politics and fighting managers and never-ending budget cuts to the point where it's not even than they aren't hiring me; they aren't hiring anyone. What was a vacancy has become true downsizing.
In a lot of ways, losing that job isn't all that bad. Bishop and I know most of the people there, and suddenly they're all telling us that really, I don't want to be there right now. That the office politics that made hiring me into a point of contention between two managers are actually widespread conflict in the department. That there's no money for upgrading the tech, let alone hiring someone. That the manager on the floor is back to the age-old questioning of "What do we pay the IT people for?" when he should know better than anyone.
And, perhaps most surprising, that many of them are looking for jobs away from this one.
It adds up to mean that maybe I don't want that job anyway.
This info makes a lot of things better. But it also doesn't change some things, and when you struggle with anxiety, things like an easy transition and knowing who you'll eat lunch with the first day are important.
So when I say that I will miss my friends, I mean it.
I'm no longer walking into a new job knowing people. That was a huge part of the appeal -- I was going to know everyone! I'd know my boss, because he used to be Bishop's boss, because I've gone to baseball games and happy hours with him. I'd know my colleagues, because we've played D&D together, because we've gone bowling, because they've had LAN parties in my basement, because they're my friends.
It would have been the easiest transition ever -- I might be new to the field, but I knew the people.
Instead, that's not what's happening. I do have a job, and it's essentially the same thing: tech support. It pays better than the other job. It has the same or better benefits, perks, all that stuff. It's smaller, so I'll get more personalized support as I start learning more hands-on skills. I like it.
But it's not the same place I've spent the last year thinking I'd be working, so even if it turns out to be amazing, it will always be a little less. If the other place were to offer me a job in six months or a year, I'd jump at it without question.
I don't know these new people.
I know the possibilities though. When I walked into Herbert five years ago, I wasn't thinking about the future. I didn't consider that some of the conversations I had those first days were happening with people who would end up being some of my best friends. I walked into Herbert without knowing a soul, and was lucky enough to love it for a long time. That could very well happen here, again, and five years from now I could be in a place I never expected.
I just have to cross my fingers and hope for it.
A lot is changing that I am looking forward to.
I will never have to grade a paper again. I will never argue with parents about their kid's grades or effort or anything else. I will never have to sit in awkward meetings with principals while they attempt to get a 15yo to agree that putting "ISIS can suck my dick" on their in-class presentation is in fact inappropriate. I will never have pretend to care that a kid said shit (or worse) in my classroom. I will never have to attend a pep assembly or homecoming parade. I will never have to confiscate a phone, or a golf ball, or a fidget spinner.
I am sure that, instead, I will get a host of new annoyances, like any job. There will be paperwork that's frustrating or busywork, annoying coworkers, and since it's new, I have to believe I'll be forced to play at least one mind-numbing 'icebreaker' game.
That's all okay. In exchange, I get to do a lot of things that are new and exciting, and it won't take long before the frustrations of my old job start to fade.
At my new job, I'll never have to confiscate a phone or computer again. Instead, I get to actually work with them -- solve problems, help others fix things, figure out new ways of going about issues. I'll get to do all the background stuff no one thinks about, like digging through the Control Panel for the right settings, or migrating data, or editing the Registry to make things easier. I will get to enjoy technology instead of police it.
And I will never have to deal with teenagers again. Sometimes teenagers are great -- they'll open your eyes to new ideas and viewpoints, they come in excited to share events and stories, they'll hug you goodbye and mean it on the last day of school. But most of the time, even the best of them are frustrating -- they don't want to do homework, they're quiet during in-class discussions, they openly admit that they don't start their papers until the night before they're due. I won't miss any of those things, even if I might occasionally miss the kids themselves.
I won't travel, which was a part of the other job I was conflicted about. I like to travel, but I was never sure about traveling one out of every three weeks -- that's a lot of time on the road, a lot of time to sleep in a hotel and eat at crappy restaurants and miss Bishop. The trade, that I have a job where I'll travel at most twice a year, is actually quite nice.
And sure, I have to get an iPhone, which to a devout Android user is like voluntarily contracting the plague. But it's a phone coming from my company, not my personal phone, and more than anything, it's an opportunity to grow and keep learning.
Really, all of this transition, this mess of uncertainty where I have a job but another might call me in a week or a month or a year, is just an opportunity to learn. That's what I keep coming back to: No matter how this plays out, no matter if the boss I know at the other jobs puts me in an awkward position in a month, no matter if this new job is where I stay for years, this is an incredible opportunity to change my life.
That is never bad.
