New Job, Global Pandemic - NBD, Really

In the midst of a global pandemic, I started a new job.

It's not like I did this on purpose. I wasn't just bored and said to myself, "Well. I don't have enough stress and chaos in my life, let's throw that secure job out the window and try something new!"  But, through a combination of organizational change, conflicting schedules, and someone apparently eating a bat(?), here I am.

It's just as scary as I thought it would be. There's the normal first day stress - what do I wear, who do I ask for help, how do I know I'm doing the right training or attending the right meeting.

There's also what I'll call WTF Pandemic Stress.

Some WTFPS is just an amped-up version of normal first day stress: What do I wear when my orientation will be remote? I'll have to turn the webcam on - Do I need a suit jacket? or pants? Okay, yes, I definitely need pants - are jeans okay? Should I be wearing shoes?

But most WTFPS is bizarre, WTF am I doing, stress.  For example:

• Literally everyone at the company is working from home - I can't wander the office halls until I find someone who can give me some direction. Do I just ping random people until I find someone who can help me? There are close to 2000 people at this company - that seems like a terrible idea. It may become necessary. 
• I have no idea who my boss is - like, none. I think maybe I have two? or three? Someone who is my "team coordinator" reached out, but they specifically called out that they are not my manager. The person who is most likely to be my manager can't meet with me until next week. Who am I supposed to be taking direction from? 
• How do I know what this company is actually like? Usually the first week is key - is everyone laughing and chatting, or is the office silent? Do engineers have stickers on their laptops? Are people silently rolling their eyes when I ask for help or not? I NEED BODY LANGUAGE TO UNDERSTAND PEOPLE. 

WTFPS also works against the seemingly positive things about this new job and its weird remote orientation.  Everyone I've talked to so far has been super sympathetic and kind - is this normal? Would I be told to relax and take things at my own pace if I were in the office? Should I feel bad that my motivation is low because I'm sick of being trapped in my house and I mostly want to play Animal Crossing while I listen to training videos?

There's no remote equivalent of being in the office, especially right now. There just isn't.

Am I being paranoid? Probably. Is it justified? Again, probably.
This is a global pandemic. Why tf am I starting a new job again?

No Easy Answers

Back in February, I got a new job.

It was not something I was expecting -- one minute, I was planning on leaving after six months with the company, and the next, I was recruited off the help desk and into an actual career path I hadn't even known existed.

I'm a Business Analyst now, working with the development team of the same company that first took a chance on me last year.  My days are filled with requirements and use cases and acceptance criteria, with solving problems and studying and incredibly dry textbooks -- so like what I was doing before I moved into IT, before I changed my life.

It feels very similar, but I have to hope it won't take 150 hours of outside-the-office work to feel capable (like last time).

In transitioning to a new team, I've gained back some of what I thought I'd lost when I left teaching.  Suddenly, there is more laughter in my day.  I tolerated most of my coworkers, but I genuinely like the developer on my team, who loves musicals and dogs and is just as sarcastic as I am.  I like the head of AppDev, who is nerdy and drives a sweet car and loves to talk about anything, like I do.  I love my boss, who is enthusiastic and energetic and so positive it's almost overwhelming.

Suddenly, I'm surrounded by people for whom technology is a passion, not just a job.  I love it.

And even if I don't love the mission of my company, I was prepared to keep right on going until I hit a year or more of experience.  I was prepared to keep learning and practicing and getting better until I was more than qualified to find a new gig at a bigger, more likable company.

Until last Thursday.

Last Thursday, my boss announced she was leaving.  June 1st is her last day.

As is easy to imagine, this threw me for a bit of a tailspin.

I genuinely like my boss.  She spent months giving me advice and direction for how to improve my skills while I was bored on the help desk.  When the opportunity arose for her to create a business analyst position on the dev team, she jumped at it -- and convinced upper management that I was the right person for the job.  She has spent countless hours with me doing training, finding resources for me to learn, and giving me feedback to help me grow.  She's even funded my membership to two professional organizations, including a local one so I can get involved in my field.

On top of that, she's spent the last two months building our dev team into one worth working on.  She's built a great data services team, recruited an App/Dev manager who is an expert in the field, and found some awesome devs to actually do the work.  She's protected us from unreasonable requests from leadership, helped us navigate some truly awful deadlines and expectations, and through it all, she's talked up how much amazing work we are doing.

In all, she's an incredible person, and I love working for her.

Now she's leaving.

It shadows my whole future with question marks -- Just how much did she protect us from the mess of senior leadership?  What's about to happen with the dev team? With my BA training?  Should I leave?  Will someone hire me when I only have six months experience  in the field? If I don't leave, can I tough it out, or will it send me straight back to the same disastrous mental health issues I'd finally left behind?

There are no easy answers.

As much as I love her, her decision is a little cutthroat too.  Our new App/Dev manager joined the firm less than a month ago, wooed away from a long career as a dev and a consultant by my boss.  The primary developer on our team took the job on a recommendation from a friend on the data services team, which my boss ran.

And without her intervention and support, I would have been gone months ago.  It was never that I loved working for a semi-shady law firm; it was that working with her made it worth it to stay.

We have a built a team here, and suddenly our fearless leader is leaving.

She wants me to go with her.  Supposedly, her new company has an open business analyst position, and she wants me to apply.  She's talking me up to her recruiter and manager, trying to get them to see what she sees in me.  I'm flattered, really --  having someone else so invested in my career is strange to say the least.  But I also don't know if it'll happen.  Her company is a big one, and big companies don't always like to take chances on young careers.  If I'm lucky, they might.  If I'm really lucky, all those question marks will dissipate into some very solid, high-dollar exclamation points.

Like she already has, my boss could change my life.

But it's slow going, like everything in corporate America, and instead for the next few weeks, all I can do is learn as much as possible and hope that maybe, just maybe, my new job can be my future one, too.

Computer Literacy, Not Coding

Lately it seems like all anyone is talking about is coding.

It came up in at least three of the four job interviews I had to get my current job.  Two of the three people interviewed in a recent TimeMoney article as examples of long-term unemployment are learning to code to beef up their resumes.  Google routinely sponsors “Learn to Code!” webinars on their homepage or as events in the year.  Every local library offers learning to code classes for beginners.  There are even toys that use Star Wars as a platform to teach kids to code. 

It is a skillset hailed as the cure-all of the modern world, solving problems from students lacking math skills to unemployment.  Resources everywhere suggest learning to code to boost your desirability as an employee, to keep your mind sharp as age advances, to boost the amount of money you can make. 

For someone in IT, it is frankly confusing. 

Few of these articles mention computer skills in a broader sense as necessary – it is possible this goes unspoken, but considering how many phone calls my help desk receives that are “how do I change the time on my computer,” I suspect that it’s simply been overlooked.    

More often than not, these articles are filled with statements designed to draw and please audiences.  They talk about how desirable coding is as a skillset, how much money a developer can make.  Sometimes they tell one-in-a-million stories about employers competing over coders, sending their salaries sky-high.  Most mention, at least indirectly, those most famous programmers who have made millions with a new product – Mark Zuckerberg comes to mind, along with basically the entirety of Silicon Valley (the place, not the show). 

It’s not that all of these things aren’t true.

 

Sure, if you learn to code, you could make a shitload of money.  You could end up being pursued aggressively by employers.  You could invent a new app and run your own company and make millions. 

But before you do all that, you have to actually learn to code. 

Almost none of these articles mention just how time-consuming and truthfully, hard, coding actually is.  Most, instead, point toward coding boot camps or small start-ups that will walk a new coder through a lot of small, easy-to-write/understand programs.   They’re full of encouraging statements like “Everyone can code!” or stories about people learning to code in retirement, as if that somehow makes it easier.   Some courses, like those on Udemy or Pluralsight, offer more comprehensive looks at coding, but even then, they often start with blindfolds and hand-holding, hiding just how difficult this skill is to acquire. 

Everything starts easy – the traditional “Hello, World!” console program (below),

a calculator, a rudimentary coin-flipper, all those little baby programs that make this seem really easy and possible.  Sure, everyone can learn to code when it’s just a few lines!

But, as with most things, it’s not that simple. 

Coding is, essentially, syntax combined with algebra.  How you put statements together, how you declare variables, and how you set your methods to run (all extremely basic tasks in C#, for example) is all about how you set up the computer to read your code. 

If you are like me, and Algebra 1 threw you back in high school, this seems near-impossible.

There’s a lot out there about how to learn to code, but the one resource that has always stuck with me is Viking Code School’s article “WhyLearning to Code is so Damn Hard.”  It has a handy graph to outline the process: 

That graph alone is enough to scare people away – the 'desert of despair' does not sound particularly welcoming.   Hell, listening to Bishop talk about hours or days at work spent running down the smallest of bugs makes me want to cry with frustration on his behalf. 

So the notion that everyone should learn this skill baffles me. 

Apparently, I am not alone. 

Last May, just as I was leaving teaching, I found myself briefly unemployed.  It didn’t last long – all told, about three weeks, one of which was just me waiting for my start date to finally arrive.  But like so many others who find themselves unemployed, I considered that maybe I should learn to code. 

Bishop set me up with a beginner Udemy course he’d used and I was off and running. 

For about an hour.

Then, stumped by the fact that coding is algebra conducted in Latin and I sucked at both, I started playing on the internet.  Within minutes of googling about coding, I stumbled upon the Tech Crunch article above, titled “Please Don’t Learn to Code.” 

It argues that, while coding is a useful skillset and our current economy does need people able to do it, providing the entire populate with these skills is wildly unnecessary.  At one point, the author says, “I would no more urge everyone to learn to program than I would urge everyone to learn to plumb.”

 

I know there are those who would argue that everyone should learn to plumb.  Resist that urge, just for a moment. 

Instead, the author argues for better problem solving skills – after all, someone can code to their heart’s content, but if they don’t understand the problem they are solving, coding a solution is pointless.  You can’t fix a bug if you don’t know why the bug is there in the first place.  Those skills are the ones that are truly lacking – the ability to figure out what’s going on, to ask the right questions, to fumble through and find a solution that works – and all that has to happen long before anyone can whip out a variable and assign it a value. 

Having read this, and having helped students, family members, and more fix computers for years, and having spent just a smattering of time in the industry, I can safely say that coding is not for everyone. 

 

Everyone does, however, need computer skills.  That’s just the world we live in now – just about everyone will interact with a computer almost daily, in some form.  And those problem solving skills that Tech Crunch wants us all to have are only sharpened by learning how to solve all kinds of small computer problems.

Instead of coding, what I would argue for is computer literacy. 

I just left teaching – I’m still so close that I write lesson plans in my head while I brush my teeth and have active shooter nightmares.  I’ll build you a curriculum right here:

Unit 1: Working a Computer: Hardware

• Parts of a computer: motherboard, processor, hard drive, RAM, and more
• How to build a computer
• Never leave the computer on all the time
• Why pressing the power button to turn it off is a terrible idea
• Don’t just yank out a jump drive
• Fix it vs. Replace it: Pros & Cons

Unit 2: Working a Computer: Software

• Basic Programs: How to set up email, word processing, online storage, etc
• Strong Passwords
• What a strong password actually IS
• Resetting a password
• Why having a million things open makes things slow
• Changing the date, time, program defaults, and more
• Adjusting the volume

Unit 3: Basic Internet Skills

• What the Internet IS
• Set up a rudimentary network; protect that network
• Resetting a router
• THE Cloud is not A cloud
• How to google properly
• Reliable sources
• Using quotes, +, and more to tailor search results

A creative teacher might even use parts of College Humor's "If Google Were a Guy" videos  (NSFW, but very funny).

Unit 4: Basic Security

• How to avoid dangerous websites
• How to protect a home network
• What phishing, ransomeware, spyware, and more actually are
• What Not to Click On in email, online, and more
• Never open email from an unknown source
• Never give out passwords or personal info over the internet
• What to do when if your email is hacked

Unit 5: Peripherals

• How to install a keyboard, mouse, jump drive, printer
• How to set up wireless anything: Bluetooth speakers, headphones, etc
• How to install a wireless printer

Somewhere in here, people also need a lesson on “How to Be Nice to Tech Support When You Call Them.”  Too many people call my help desk and are already shouting when I pick up the phone.  They are ignoring the fact that I have literally All The Power over their computer.  Do not fuck with the IT people. 

But I digress. 

I even have the perfect time in high school: junior year, maybe opposite Personal Finance, so they have experienced some of these things but haven't yet totally checked out of school.  The final could be sitting them down in front of a computer that is all kinds of screwed up and telling them to fix it.  And disabling Google beforehand – Google is any good tech’s best friend. 

#IndustrySecrets

Some of this probably sounds painfully straightforward, but trust me, it is not.  In six months on a help desk, I have had to explain how to minimize windows, that files are different sizes and why that matters, how to turn the volume up, and why leaving your computer on for a month is a terrible idea.  People do not understand. 

Sure, sometimes, I wonder if anyone would trust the lawyers of the firm I support with their cases if they knew some of the ridiculously simple computer issues they can’t fix.  And the fact that someone will call me and brag that they don’t get computers so they’re keeping me employed does make me want to kill them.  I’m just not sure it’s 100% their fault. 

So much of our world runs on technology – smartphones, tablets, laptops, smart watches.  It is easy to assume that, since technology is ubiquitous, everyone knows how to use it.  For years I heard teachers say that kids should know how to use a laptop because they are always on their phones. 

But using something and using it correctly are not the same. 

After all, no one wants to be like one of my coworkers, who was trying to code something and accidentally deleted all his system files.  You know, the ones that let the computer turn on and load an operating system. 

Of course without some computer literacy, people probably don’t quite know what it means to load an OS, so perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself.

We can't have everyone coding until everyone can actually use a computer -- and let me tell you, almost no one can actually use a computer.

If I Start Wearing Purple at Work, No One Will Get It

Last week, I fulfilled a years-old curiosity: I went to see Gogol Bordello.

If you've never heard of them, Gogol Bordello is a Gypsy punk rock back from NYC, and they sound exactly like you'd expect from that description.  If you've heard of them, it's probably for "Start Wearing Purple":

Just about every tattoo parlor I've ever been in has them playing on repeat in the background. They've made documentaries about their band and added their bizarre sound to a variety of eclectic movie soundtracks, and they have more band members than I have fingers.  Years ago, the frontman was the lead in the movie Everything is Illuminated, opposite Elijah Wood, and spent the movie (as far as I can tell) being himself.

The band lives for the stage; they tour relentlessly, almost nomadic like their Gypsy-inspired sound, and they are known and loved for their on-stage performance and energy.

Even though I can only name the one song, I've always wanted to see them.  They live as a constant presence in the back of my mind, all tumbling chords and pounding drums and cheerful accordions.

So when I got the opportunity, I bought tickets immediately.  Poor Bishop -- he didn't have a choice; he was going too.

We drove to the venue a few nights ago with the same repeated sentiment: This was an experience.  If the show was awful, we'd leave, but we needed to see them.  Needed to experience it, just to see what it was like.  If the Wikipedia stories of their insanity were true.

They were.

By the second song in,  frontman Eugene Hutz had produced a bottle of wine from somewhere and proceeded to tear the cork out with his teeth.  He waved it around as he danced, unbuttoned-to-his-waist shirttails flying, while next to him, a 70 year old music professor positively wailed on his electric violin.  By the end of the concert, he'd broken half the horse hairs of his bow.

By the fourth song, their second-best known called Wonderlust King, the little kids and the braless women surrounding us were losing their shit dancing, the kids up on the table next to us as their parents danced behind them.  The according player on stage stood on top of the speakers and made faces at the audience while he gave Weird Al Yankovich a run for his polka-loving money.

The opera singer came out next, wearing a steam-punk floor-length orange leather jacket over leggings and binoculars, her stunning voice soaring over the Russian pouring from Hutz's mouth.

Then came the brass section, four guys in white shirts and Beetlejuice-stripped black and white pants that I quickly realized had been hanging out with the audience before the show (they'd been right behind us, actually - how was I supposed to know that the pants and the lime-green headband meant they were in the band??).  These guys, complete with trombone, trumpet, saxophone, and baritone, proceeded to rock the next three or four songs until Hutz took a break to take off his military jacket -- and then the saxophone player got into a duel with the violinist in the most insane, talented display of playing I may have ever seen.  The saxophone player could match every note of every arpeggio rolling off the strings, something I didn't think was even possible outside a symphony.

Even the frontman couldn't resist, and when they booted up the next song, wine bottle in hand, he waved all the horns back out, the opera singer produced an enormous marching band drum, and the drummer himself came out front to sing.  His white shirt was stained pink by the end.

The drum ended up in the audience for the finale, Hutz standing atop it to alternate between conducting the audience and the band (and the bouncers right behind him to catch him if he decided to crowd surf).  The crowd itself was so loud, and so enthusiastic, that when he aimed the mic to let the venue sing the refrain, I could actually understand the words.  That just doesn't happen.

Don't judge the quality of my smartphone camera :) 

And then the lights went purple.

I've seen a lot of fabulous concerts over the years -- I've seen Davey Havok walk across the hands of a mosh pit and Chris Cornell sing a duet with Chester Bennington.  I've seen Dave Mustaine rock the solos of Hanger 18, Bruce Dickinson climb the speakers to wave a British flag during The Trooper, and Gerard Way force the audience to pray to his dead grandmother.  Hell, I've seen Ninja Sex Party cover Asia's Heat of the Moment and Papa Emeritas conduct his ghouls with GHOST.

Gogol Bordell wasn't better than all of those, but it is rare that I've seen a finale with more excitement, more energy, than the refrain to Start Wearing Purple.

It was an experience I wouldn't trade for anything -- but it did throw some things into sharp relief.

Bishop went with me; like me, he was curious about the rumored energy and theatrics of this band, and like me, he was not disappointed.  But... he is the only one I shared this experience with.  I didn't walk into work the next morning excited to share the story with anyone; no one asked.  No one cared. They talk about cholesterol levels and church gatherings and grandchildren, and only rarely do they ask about my life, my interests.  My coworkers and I don't exchange stories -- we exchange problems. We aren't friends.

So though I like my job, my new career, I miss my old... life, really.  I miss seeing my friends on a daily basis.  I miss having people to eat lunch with and share stories with, that daily dose of empathy and laughter that always bolstered the necessary courage to deal with the rest of the day.

I am lonely at work in a way I wasn't expecting.

This isn't necessarily bad -- everything I'm learning requires so much work, so much effort and sheer concentration, that I don't have much time for fan theories or discussions over character development in Stranger Things 2.  Being on my own is freeing sometimes because I can push myself further, faster, than I've ever done before.

I'm going to need it.  In less than two months, I'm starting the job search once again, this time looking for a bigger, more professional place to really grow now that I've kicked down the IT door.

Maybe, just maybe, I can find a place with people I will love, people who want to talk about Thor: Ragnarok and argue about which new Star Wars movie is the best and swoon over all the UST between Dean Winchester and Castiel.

And if I'm really lucky, one day some coworker will ask what I did last night, and their face will light up when I brag that I got to see Gogol Bordello, and I can start wearing purple to work again.

An Opportunity

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.

A Love Letter to Teaching

My mother said something strange to me today.

We were discussing my upcoming career change -- she's been trying to be supportive, which I know must be hard.  I hesitated to tell her I was leaving my job for a long time because I teach in a very prestigious school district, top 15% in the nation, and she's the kind of person whose identity is wrapped up solely in being a parent.  She tied up a lot of herself in my job as a teacher.

She might be a little overbearing, but I still didn't want to disappoint her.

To her credit, she's trying.  Thankfully she seems to recognize how unhappy I was teaching, even if her issues with empathy mean she never asked any deeper probing questions and thus my battles with anxiety remain unspoken.

We were talking about how my school year is drawing to a close, and thus my new job is starting soon.  She's excited for me.  My friends threw me a going-away happy hour yesterday, complete with gifts.  I'm going to a jazz band concert this week, and prom is next weekend, and some other friends and I are going to our principal's retirement party, co-opted only a little since they couldn't make it to happy hour.  On the new job front, two managers I know well are arguing over who gets to hire me.

It's going to be a good end to the year, I hope (assuming my anxiety doesn't get the best of me, as it might).

I explain all this so what happened next makes sense.  My mom listened to all this, and eventually gave me a hug and said: "I'm so glad you're getting a job in IT.  I always thought you were too smart to be a teacher."

My world ground to a halt.

Don't start shouting, my brain cautioned once it had gotten over the initial shock.  She's trying to be supportive.  

In her own way, she was.  She knows how intelligent and motivated I am, how much I enjoy throwing myself into something, how dedicated and creative I can be.  She wants me to have a job I love, something I want to go to every day, something I am proud to do.

My mom was trying to compliment me -- to tell me that she thinks I'll be great in IT.  That sentiment is nice to hear.

The rest of it? Not so much.

There is nothing stupid about being a teacher.  Too much of our society seems to think that for some reason; we even have idioms saying, "Those who can't, teach," which has never failed to infuriate me.  To dismiss educators as stupid maligns the profession in ways that are not just painful, but fundamentally outrageous.

There is nothing dumb about building lessons that will help students learn to read, write, think, more effectively than they could yesterday.  There is nothing foolish in dedicating time and energy to grading, giving feedback, learning from other teachers. There is nothing trivial about the time and love that teachers devote to their relationships with students.

And there is absolutely nothing shameful about trying to change the world.

The teachers I work with are some of the most intelligent, empathetic, motivated people I have ever met.

My best friend at Herbert High* is a guy I'll call Sandman, who is easily one of the smartest, most interesting people I know.  The first time I met him, we talked about how to teach Samuel Coleridge Taylor's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" utilizing Iron Maiden.  I remember being impressed not only that this teacher was into Maiden, but that he had the stones to teach Coleridge Taylor.  Last week, I walked into his classroom to find him using an elaborate metaphor involving some jerk eating all the leftover Easter candy at a crowded lunch table to explain why Lenina from Brave New World sleeps with everything that moves.  In the five years in between, Sandman has taught me how to be a teacher, usually by example -- how to be clever and effective in my lessons, compassionate but firm in my due date policies, empathetic when students are upset but tough when they need boundaries.  We've rebuilt curriculum together, solved a myriad of student-related crises, and argued over whether or not Guardians of the Galaxy is actually a good movie.

Never once have I thought "Shit, this man is way too smart to be a teacher."  Instead I'm grateful to have learned from him so that I could be a better, smarter teacher.

It would be easy to say that Sandman is an isolated example, but you'd be wrong.  Another close friend, Susan*, has been teaching for nineteen years, and every August, she's got something new and exciting she can't wait to try in her classroom.  I'd always thought that, after a while, teaching gets stale -- that's something I feel now, and it's only been five years.  Not Susan.  She learns new things every year, sometimes every day it seems, and it's usually about incorporating technology into her classroom so her students are always trying something different.  The rule in teaching is to change ~10% each year so you don't get bored; Susan easily doubles that.  Beyond the classroom, I have never met someone who reads as much outside of school as she does, both 'for fun' books so she can talk to her students about what they're reading and curriculum/best practice textbooks to help her be a better teacher.  She is constantly improving, constantly inspiring, and her kids are constantly learning as a result.

Geri, another Language Arts teacher I hang out with, teaches her students meditation and mindfulness practices alongside To Kill a Mockingbird.  She's made mental health her priority, and in a school where we've had five deaths (including two suicides) in four years, students adore her commitment to helping them manage stress.  I've never met a more compassionate, truly kind person.

Some of my friends, like Amy, don't necessarily get along well with others due to their commitment to their students.  Amy will often fight with teachers when they push students too hard without reason, and she's never afraid to say what she thinks.  That can rub people the wrong way, but it also makes her the fiercest advocate for students I've ever seen.  She's the person who will be late to events with friends because she's on the phone with a student's parents or helping our counselors write a life plan.

Other teachers in my building, though I might not know them as well personally, do absolutely amazing things.  One of our math teachers has built a program from scratch to get students who failed Algebra I to not just passing, but loving math in less than a semester.  Another Language Arts teacher is routinely at school until 6:00pm working with students to better their writing.  A science teacher routinely destroys her own classroom (and her living room -- I've seen the pictures on facebook) to create a pseudo-crime scene for her forensics students so they get the true CSI experience.   These are people devoted to what they do, and smart enough to do it well.

I'm always in awe that my school is lucky enough to have people like Sandman, and Susan, and Geri and Amy and all the rest.  I have always been proud to be a teacher, especially because I got to teach alongside other teachers.

The insinuation that somehow all these people aren't smart, or that if they are, they are wasted on teaching, is more than insulting -- it is degrading to them and to the profession.  To suggest that somehow I'm smart because I'm getting out is frankly disgusting.

And what does it say about me that my mother is willing to insult my job?  Likely she never would have said it if I wasn't leaving, but I've been teaching for five years.  I have a Master's degree in Education.  I worked my ass off to be a good teacher, and it was never because I wasn't smart.

There was never anything shortsighted about my joining this profession other than failing to understand myself.  Everything else I felt going in -- the desire to help people, the passion for reading and writing, the excitement of getting up in front of a classroom, the joy of watching students actually learn -- everything about that is true, and valuable, and amazing.

I wouldn't have survived the downs of teaching if I wasn't smart.  I wouldn't have been able to pick apart what didn't work, and make it better.  I wouldn't have figured out how to forge better relationships with students so they'd actually learn.  I wouldn't have been able to learn from some of the smartest people I know, and I wouldn't be walking away with some truly amazing friendships in tow.

In a lot of ways, leaving breaks my heart.

I have to do it for my own mental health.  I know that.  Just a few days ago, I found a teaching blog I started in Fall 2015 in an attempt to stave off the inevitable; instead, its entries chronicle the anxiety that slowly started destroying my mental health.  Re-reading it, it's easy to see just how damaged and hurting I was, how much stress I was under, how broken by the emotional demands of this job.  But it has some ups too:  the community I am a part of, the reminders of what I loved about my students, the successes I will miss.

Teaching has changed my life, for good and ill, and I will defend its value, and the amazing people who do it, with every breath if I have to.








*Disclaimer: Though the situations depicted here are factual, all names -- including those of teachers, students, parents, schools, and districts -- have been changed to protect those involved.  The opinions expressed here are mine alone; I do not, nor would I presume to, speak on behalf of my school or district, nor on behalf of others in my profession.

Herbert High is a fictitious title used to represent the school where I teach.  The name was chosen as a reference to Frank Herbert, author of my favorite book Dune.  

Breaking Boundaries

My life is changing faster than I ever expected, and it's all I can do to keep up.

It's nothing immediate either.  Nothing horrific or tragic or even sudden, but that doesn't seem to matter.  Instead, I'm going about my daily life just like I did a year ago, but everything is different.  

A year ago, I was struggling.  I'd been dealing with anxiety basically alone for close to six months.  I was grieving the death of a student.  I was trying to work through the semester without breaking, and I was trying to take classes to become a counselor.  It was a lot, and it was a lot I had never expected.  

Now, a year later, I'm still struggling, but there is light at the end of the tunnel.  

In less than five months, I'll be leaving my current job.  I won't be a teacher anymore.  I realized last spring that I didn't want to be a counselor, and I finally (after months of fighting it) figured out a few months later that I don't want to be a teacher anymore.  It's not the place for me.  It likely never was -- I choose the degree as a fall-back, because I was an English major in college and had no idea what the fuck I was going to do with that.  

Six years later, I was finally ready to acknowledge that, while it had been a good starting point, teaching was never the place I wanted to end up.  

Now, more than six months after figuring that out, I'm at peace with it.  

Instead, a month from today, I take the first of my A+ certification tests.  A month after that, in March, I'll take another, and then in May I will walk away from the classroom I've occupied since I was 23.  

I'm unbelievably excited.  

I think (believe, hope, know) I have a job lined up already, from an employer I've known for years.  I am ready to move into the IT field, ready to embrace what I spent years fighting.  

It's hard, almost painful, to think about now, but I originally went into college planning to study computer science.  As a high school student, I'd always thought computers were interesting.  My older brother was a programmer, and while I didn't really get that part of things, I found the rest of it fascinating.  

But I'm a woman.  The world wasn't really prepared to help me embrace that interest.  

There was no huge push for women in STEM ten years ago like there is today.  Oh, sure, the movement was starting, but it hadn't swept through my traditional Catholic high school, nor my traditional Catholic family.  My dad was on board with me studying whatever I wanted, but my mom always pushed me toward fields that would enable me to have a family one day.  I can still remember the conversation where she tried to convince me to become a pharmacist, because they could potentially make good money and work a regular 40 hour/week schedule.  The fact that I'd never in my life wanted a family didn't factor in.  

I ended up sliding into English as a default when my parents divorced and I transferred schools.  I wanted something safe, something I knew I was good at, something where I didn't have to break free of the comfortable boundaries of my life.  Too much else was moving too fast.  

I forgot about computers entirely.  

Two years after we graduated, Bishop moved into the IT field, and he's skyrocketed ever since.  He loves it.  And as he learned, he taught me.  I've always been fortunate in that I love to learn, and I learn easily.  The effort I'd so feared in college wasn't overwhelming because I was doing it for myself.  No tests, no grades, nothing.  It was awesome.  

When my carefully constructed fall-back plan imploded under the realities of just how stressful, time-consuming, and frankly not fun teaching really is, I wasn't surprised that I eventually came back to IT as the right place for me.  

This is not to say that it has been easy.  I've been reading a textbook for the last six months -- it's 1500 pages long, full of charts to memorize, acronyms I don't understand, terms that are as unfamiliar to me as calculus would be to a dog.  It's dry, boring, and more than once, I've found myself in tears, head in my hands, as I contemplate the enormity of the task I've set for myself.  

But I'm learning again, and as I go, I'm remembering why I liked computers in the first place.  I get to problem solve, and use all my creative and critical thinking skills to find those solutions, and I see all the tiny details of how this world works.  It's so much more intricate, and amazing, than I ever knew.  

So no, I haven't been writing much in the last year.  I haven't read many books, or played many video games, and goodness knows, I miss those things.  I want them back.  Very soon, I'll have them, but right now I am changing my life, and there is no better feeling.