I’ve chosen the wrong career. Now what?
I’ve been stuck in a rut for a while now. I turned 25 and all of a sudden an immense pressure descended on me and began commanding me to find what it is that I’m going to do with the rest of my life. The pressure existed both externally and internally. A mother who nagged and told me that I ought to know what I want to do by now because everyone else knew(a lie) and appeared happy doing it (an even bigger lie). And alongside mother dearest, I had my own incessant need to be as successful as I had been throughout my school career. I was an A* student living an adult life that didn’t seem to match the trajectory hinted at by my former glory days. So I did what I thought was best to lift the pressure, I chose a career. An easy, thoughtless choice. I became a teacher.
Now in no way am I saying that teaching is easy or the decision to become a teacher light. But my decision-making powers lacked a certain, discernment shall we say. Why?
- It didn’t require much brainpower to choose. Everyone knows what a teacher is and what they do. I didn’t have to research my options or dig deep to find what careers might actually match my interests or skills. I could lazily pluck the choice out of the air and run with it.
- My mum was a teacher — I lived and breathed teaching for a number of years. So it’s the one career I knew inside out. The schools she worked in were more like a second home. The kids knew me, the staff knew me, the photocopier and laminator also knew me very well.
And so I took all of the steps to get me there. I trawled my way through the Post Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE), throwing in what I felt would be a personal challenge, by deciding to teach at Secondary level. I watched friends leave the course because they just couldn’t (or more importantly didn’t want to) hack the hormonal kids, the piles of paperwork, and the political crossfire that seemed inevitable in every staff room. And I’ll admit that it was enough to bring anyone to tears, to accelerate anyone’s blood pressure but also to thoroughly reward you. So I stuck with it, but more because I knew that I couldn’t face that chest tightening pressure that loomed with still not having a career at 25. After 10 months, I crawled over the finish line and thought
“I’ve done it. Everyone can get off my back now.” (Word to Pooja).
The celebrations didn’t last as long as I’d hoped. That warm, fuzzy sense of fulfillment passed as instantly as it came. It was replaced by a debilitating emptiness that questioned whether I had made the right choice. The answer I was afraid to respond with — stuttering, pausing, and flat out refusing to say, was ‘no’.
So you’re telling me, I went through all of that to pass from one feeling of discomfort to another?
Unfortunately, yes.
Fast forward to the present day, nearly three years into this gig, and the emptiness has become a gaping chasm. I’ve set myself up to be in teaching for one more year, thanks to a joyous two-year Middle Eastern contract, and now a new question has reared its ugly head. What’s next?
Part of the predicament of choosing lies in the joyous era that we millennials have found ourselves in. Caught between two worlds, where jobs blossomed in fields that we had never heard of, and careers advice pigeonholed us with antiquated knowledge. We were bound to be at a loss, as we found ourselves at the junction of this new world. Now there is a group of directionless 20 somethings who seemed to have missed today’s opportunities in favor of yesterdays. Now I question how we get our feet in the door when our slurry of poor career choices (both personally made and naively followed) have left the boat feeling so far away. How do I, as a nearing 30-year-old woman, get the opportunity to explore and start again?
