Last night my in-laws had a family get together. Their family is quite large so this involves between 20 and 30 people when it’s a small group. Since these are people I only see a few times a year, it involves a lot of the familiar catch-up conversation and inevitably brings up a career dilemma for me as people ask about my former career.
I trained as a teacher. I consider myself a teacher. I am still very passionate about education and child development. But, I’m working in my husband’s family business (along with my husband – same company but different offices). What I do now is a job. It’s a good job, but not one that I feel passionate about. The problem is that switching back to teaching would be all kinds of difficult! While I have let go of the idea of going back to a classroom teaching setting, it still doesn’t solve the dilemma that I have in that, I want to be doing something different than what I am currently doing.
It really hit home last night that teaching is still something I’m quite passionate about as I was discussing the matter with my brother-in-law’s girlfriend who is about to head off to law school. She is so great to talk to and she really listens and engages with a person. As I finished my rambling about a subject it really hit me that even though I haven’t been teaching for the last 3 years, I am still very much a teacher. A teacher with no classroom.
Now that I’ve been reminded of this, it leaves me painfully aware of how my current job isn’t a good fit for me. The problem is that leaving it would be difficult on many different levels. But, I’d still like to find some other outlet for myself so that I don’t let my passion simply go unfulfilled. Definitely not the easiest project that I’ve ever taken on!
