from teaching. This is based largely on my own experiences. I became a teacher for several different reasons, most of which I think were kind of foolish now looking back. In the final sum, I realized this year that it’s not worth it and I need to get out now—at least for the time being.

For one, as a starry-eyed college student I didn’t care about earning a lot of money, but now in my relatively old age I’ve found that I actually do care about it a lot. To be honest, my plan A was to marry someone with a good income and rely on them to be the primary breadwinner while I was at least partially a SAHM, so I didn’t put as much thought into choosing a good career path as I should have. I did end up in a situation where my husband makes enough money to support us without me working, but the huge gap between our earning potential (after equal investment in training, etc.) is honestly very damaging to my self-worth. Looking at salary as a value that society places on one’s worth makes me feel like a failure.

Another reason I thought I’d like to be a teacher was to have a schedule that could match with my future kids. I see a lot of women interested in teaching for this reason, but they often don’t realize how much the responsibilities of a teacher extend beyond the contracted school day. Yes, you can spend the summer with your kids, but you might not get to spend much quality time with them during the school year unless you’re only working part time and/or already have many years of experience to draw from to speed up lesson prep, etc.

Finally, I thought as a teacher I would get to make lots of meaningful connections with students, feel that I was making the world a better place, etc. But in reality I seldom if ever feel that way. For every student who smiles at me or writes me a letter of appreciation, there is another who says they hate my class or calls me a b**** (but then I still have to go in and treat them with respect and spend hours of my personal time trying to create ways for them to learn everyday). Teachers of other age groups or types of classes might have a higher positive reinforcement ratio, but for the past several years the students I’ve been teaching are about 30% juvenile delinquents and it’s extremely unpleasant.

I’m sure there are surprises in most professions, but teaching has a particularly sharp learning curve and I doubt many teachers would say that they feel they got what they expected when they signed up for the job.