Quitting Teaching: The Hardest and Easiest Decision of My Life So Far

When I was growing up, I was told that if I worked hard enough, my achievements would pay off. If I studied hard enough, I would get into a great college. If I worked hard enough, I would get that high-paying job. If I did enough, I would be successful. I held onto the same mindset and applied it to teaching. If I gave 110% of my effort, that would take me to new heights.

Fast-forward 20 years, and here I am, a burnt-out individual who quit teaching after nearly a decade. It was a major surprise for all my co-workers, friends, and family members, but it was a decision I've never been more sure about.

Unfortunately, giving 110% to the job resulted in a major decline in my health. I gained so much weight. Coupled with the narrowness of my nasal passages, I developed sleep apnea before I hit 30. I woke up every day feeling exhausted and lethargic...Living off of a morning coffee or matcha...sleeping late because I needed to lesson plan a new curriculum from scratch/grade/project plan/event plan into the late night hours...I chalked it up to just being overworked. I told myself I was just stressed, but everyone felt stressed. Everyone has work. This is what life is, so it's normal. It feels horrible, but it is what it is. If I worked hard enough and pushed through, I'd eventually get to a place where I wouldn't have to work this hard anymore.

As time passed and I just continued feeling a decline in my quality of life, my weight gain and sleep ended up affecting my hormones. Since high school (for 15+ years), I've been able to predict my menstrual cycle to the exact day and sometimes time of day. For the first time in my life, I also stopped getting my period. I knew I wasn't pregnant, but I also knew something was wrong. That's when I finally took myself to my doctor.

I went to multiple appoints for seven different doctors in half a year: my general physician, who then referred me to an OB/GYN, an allergist, an ENT, a pulmonologist, a radiologist for a CT scan of my brain, and a dermatologist. It turns out that my brain was only receiving 70% oxygen because I was experiencing 60 apneas an hour...1 apnea event every minute...Meaning I was fighting to breathe every minute I was sleeping. For some context, anything below 90% oxygen and 30 apneas an hour is considered severe and even life-threatening. I was experiencing brain fog. I was becoming more forgetful. It was harder for me to focus. Luckily, all the other tests, scans, and samples were mostly normal...Besides my sleep apnea, I've lived with severe allergies and eczema. No new news there. But the lack of oxygen was taking the heaviest toll on my body and brain. So, I wasn't completely wrong: stress was the only contributing factor. But, I was told that if I didn't make the changes to get my health under control, it could lead to fertility issues because it was affecting my hormones.

Hearing that news made quitting my job the easiest decision of my life. The fact that I was allowing my work to supersede my health to the point of possible infertility was insane. I was giving my life to my teaching career, but to what end? I was going to work so hard and achieve so much...but give up having children and my own family in the future? As much as I loved teaching, I needed to quit teaching.

As rewarding as it is, the majority of teachers I know have some sort of major health complication. Whether it's sudden heart issues, episodes of extreme vertigo, rashes, unhealthy diets, insomnia, clumps of hair falling out, or multiple appointments for underlying conditions that have worsened, the work-life balance is hard to maintain as a teacher. Yes, we get our summer breaks, but it's not a coincidence that all those health problems dissipate during the summer and flare back up when the school year starts again.

It's really difficult to not only teach the state standards for your subject but also attempt to help 90+ kids navigate through their traumas, trials, and tribulations. That requires extra effort on top of the lesson planning to keep kids engaged but also challenging their brains to score well on a state test that you also have to get them to care about. And if you don't put in the extra effort to care more about these kids on top of caring about teaching your content, then you "aren't doing enough," and you "aren't a good teacher." Even when you do put in the extra effort, throw in your administration, adding to your overflowing plate of tasks and still saying you aren't doing enough.

All this to say...I'm the result of poor work-life balance and boundaries. If you've read my other posts, it's also taken me a long time to understand healthy boundaries in relationships. It also took multiple therapy sessions to navigate my own choices and create boundaries in my life. Regardless, teaching is the most rewarding experience I've ever had, and I still feel like working in the education sector is my calling in life. I do miss aspects of the job, and maybe I'll be back in a classroom one day in my future. As of right now, I'm enjoying the new life I'm building with the new boundaries protecting me.