Officially Unemployed

The title cannot be as straightforward as it is and is the primary reason for me being in Ellensburg since yesterday. As of Friday 22 July, 2011, I have been laid off due to the fact my school no longer has enough students to support the large staff. It is something I have very mixed feelings about considering I had:

a.) Knew that there was a strong chance I was going to be let go.

b.) I am not as passionate about teaching as I used to be.

During the course of the past school year, I had been questioning myself a lot and feeling pretty frazzled about my position as a teacher. I had initially came into it because of an old role-play forum which had inadvertently turned into a writing class in its early stages. It was weird yet exhilarating when I was getting messages back from people stating that their grades were improving in their classes because of the forum!

Of course, I was still iffy about it and ended up tutoring at a few schools in Seattle and teaching at a school close to downtown after graduation. During that time I felt that it was my calling to be a teacher. I was helpful, supportive, and loved giving very young children the building blocks for being successful in the classroom and outside of it. I was very happy and content and thought that this would be it forever. I had even proceeded to take a course in the Montessori method to help along what I believed was the right choice for me.

Something changed slightly, however, when I was hospitalized for gallbladder infection and removal. The days I lay in the hospital bed are still very clear to me and the way it planted that seed of doubt is also what has plagued me for years. I had started to wonder if I was fit for an altogether different field than what I had initially thought so many years before. I started to admire more the ladies in the hospitals and clinics and had even considered briefly that maybe I should have taken up nursing. It took me a month to purge it from my mind and which I later attributed to possibly being depressed and sick during my recovery stages.

The strange this is, years down the line I began to question myself again when I was let go from my other job just a year ago. I felt I was getting messages left and right about a career change by a few friends, and something kept nagging at the back of my head that something wasn’t right. But me? I am a doubter. I try to reason my way out of things and brushed it aside as anxiety because I had just lost my job and wanted to find a new one quickly.

I easily found another job, but during the course of the school year I kept thinking, “Maybe this isn’t right for me.” I knew that for other reasons outside of work related issues, I wasn’t very happy. Although there were very key things I did still enjoy about the job: helping children when they were either hurt or needed that emotional support that they often need to navigate complex relationships for their age group. By May I had come to a decision that I wanted something else. By June I came to finalize that I really wanted something else. By July I came to a firm stand that I will go back to school and find something else out there that allows me to put to better use the gifts I have.

A school setting? Its great. Especially for the younger children because you have to help them on many levels that include not just academic success but emotional, mental, and physical. A child who is just three years old finds a great deal amount of pride when you are able to encourage and show them how to climb to the top most part of a climber on their own AND how to get down safely without hovering over them like a mother hen. However, there are so much more to being a teacher that I find detracts from actual teaching and focuses more on catering to unreasonable and demanding parents expecting their four year old child to do algebraic equations. The saddest part is that I WISH I were kidding about that last bit, but I am not and that is what disheartens me greatly and why I would rather put my energies elsewhere rather than fight an uphill battle I am no longer wanting to run up against.

So, here I am. Sad because I lost my job and my source of income, but happy because I feel its a sign to move onto something else. I’m listening now and I believe I just need to figure out where to go from here. Nursing has been nagging at me. I’m told I would be good at it, but I don’t want to fall into the same trap I did when I went into teaching. Just because I am good at something doesn’t mean I will be happy, right? I’ll probably explore the alternatives and see what will truly lay ahead of me. But for now? I think I’ll just roll with the punches and let them come as they may.

5 thoughts on “Officially Unemployed

  1. Keep your chin up hun! I’m a strong believer in ‘everything happens for a reason’. This is a blessing in disguise :) Time to pursue true happiness!

    • :) Thank you very much. When I think back to a lot of things, it feels like the messages were always there but now some higher being is forcefully showing it to me. ;) I’m excited for the future, for sure!

  2. I think rolling with the punches is a great way to be about things. With this, I was able to find out about things you’ve never talked to me about in great detail, so I’m happy to know more about the thought process you had of everything you went through. Whatever happens, you’re going to be fine, of course. And I’ll be around to support you every step of the way.

    • I know. I’m sorry. I try to talk to you, but sometimes I just want to forget it and just let it stew in my head. I guess I really am an introvert… :X

Comments are closed.