I have been teaching in college for nine years now, these past few weeks I am faced with one of the hardest decisions I have ever made, to stop teaching so I can dedicate my time to my growing hobby turned business and at the same time be at home more for my son.
It’s really been a soul searching journey for me; I laid down all my cards at the table so to speak and analyze every reason why I want to teach and why I want to work from home.
My motivations when I chose a career in the academe are the flexible hours and I wanted to take up my master’s degree then. Another reason is that I am a people person, I love to interact with people and the great way to do that is by teaching. I was a programmer before but after a few months with only a few people to talk to and mostly the computer as a companion I became really depressed, it was a really demanding job and I realized I crave for people interaction.
Those were my reasons nine years ago, and at present it seems I have accomplished what I have set out to do, I have earned my Master in Information Technology degree in 2006 and due to the flexible hours I enriched myself through the various seminars and trainings I had like the baking classes, cooking classes, IT seminars, business seminars. Now there is no excuse for the flexible time for as my son grows I realized I need to give more time and attention to him too.
I asked myself I am just teaching because it has become my comfort zone? Have I overgrown it? Am I ready to move on?
Looking back this past year it seems indeed I have move on…
I have put my business online, enjoyed the sales and friends I made because of it and now offers are coming in, new avenues for business are opening up for me.
The only reason I have now for teaching is the love I have for my students but I have to face reality, I have another life besides teaching. So today I asked for a temporary leave of absence for the coming semester and we’ll see if I can come back to teaching the next school year. I may not teach fulltime ever again but perhaps one day a week for a few hours would be possible.
I will miss my students but it is not really goodbye, in today’s technology I’m only an text, an e-mail or a Instant Message away.
It’s really been a soul searching journey for me; I laid down all my cards at the table so to speak and analyze every reason why I want to teach and why I want to work from home.
My motivations when I chose a career in the academe are the flexible hours and I wanted to take up my master’s degree then. Another reason is that I am a people person, I love to interact with people and the great way to do that is by teaching. I was a programmer before but after a few months with only a few people to talk to and mostly the computer as a companion I became really depressed, it was a really demanding job and I realized I crave for people interaction.
Those were my reasons nine years ago, and at present it seems I have accomplished what I have set out to do, I have earned my Master in Information Technology degree in 2006 and due to the flexible hours I enriched myself through the various seminars and trainings I had like the baking classes, cooking classes, IT seminars, business seminars. Now there is no excuse for the flexible time for as my son grows I realized I need to give more time and attention to him too.
I asked myself I am just teaching because it has become my comfort zone? Have I overgrown it? Am I ready to move on?
Looking back this past year it seems indeed I have move on…
I have put my business online, enjoyed the sales and friends I made because of it and now offers are coming in, new avenues for business are opening up for me.
The only reason I have now for teaching is the love I have for my students but I have to face reality, I have another life besides teaching. So today I asked for a temporary leave of absence for the coming semester and we’ll see if I can come back to teaching the next school year. I may not teach fulltime ever again but perhaps one day a week for a few hours would be possible.
I will miss my students but it is not really goodbye, in today’s technology I’m only an text, an e-mail or a Instant Message away.
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