Changing Paths

Post Type: Short Excerpt

I thought of this while there was a mess up in my supposed interview and I'm being rescheduled, adding another layer of uncertainty.

I'm working head-on trying to change my destiny the last couple weeks (months) - and believe me friends, if you are an innately shy person, lacks courage, and have not been accumulating at an early time, and stubborn. Yes, stubborn that you don't want to give up what you've been accumulating for all these years, because you are stubborn that it defines you, and that hoping others would appreciate your similar values. So you hold onto them, unwilling to give up. And suddenly you are doing all these things together all at once, but unable to maintain focus on anything, except for the current thing that's boggling your mind - change your destiny.

It is very hard to turn your life's path to another direction.

But it's not impossible.

This is the first time I've come to the Grace Hopper Conference. Almost all students that came here are in some sort of computer science/electrical engineering related discipline.

I spent a good amount of time last night networking with the recruiters, leeching on-site interviews, trying to get recommendations from them to Waterloo recruiters. And a large part of today will be spent on that as well.

My reasons - it is hard for me to stand out as a candidate in the flooding Jobmine with HR people where every one my seniority has had 2n[+-1] number of co-op work experiences in IT, and I have had none; but if I am offered an interview, I can at least hope to impress.

But I will not remove any of my past teaching experience from my resume. I am too old. I am stubborn. Even my LinkedIn profile screams "teaching, education, teaching". I refuse to change.

"If only teaching was not such an unprestigious career."

"It's sad, I know, I was going to be a teacher, but now I'm a software engineer."

"My dad was a teacher, and he was so smart and so qualified... but there was no appreciation."

Shame. I understand this feel all too well, as some people who have chatted to me about teaching these past two days.

I believe that if I do try hard enough and want it badly enough. I will end up a decent job in the IT industry and open up a new blue sky. The industry is shiny, fancy, and is a real world. There are lots of opportunities to grow in the future, climb the corporate ladder, and eventually meet an almost-too-real world, not indulged in the joy and safe bubble of classroom and academia. It's calling me, and so tempting, I can almost taste it.

But I am not trying hard enough. The reason - I am uncertain and I am afraid. My own indeterminism holds me back. I am uncertain if I want to change. The harder I think, the more frustrated I get.

I am afraid I am not smart enough. I am afraid that if I try to strive for things that I have to work for, that if I am challenged, intellectually, I will fail miserably and get flushed down the toilet like leftover porridge.

I am angry at myself - the initial love I had for teaching people, "show-off", be a clown in front of students, laugh with young people, do my share of care for the world, feel good about being needed by people. I still have that, very much.

But even before I set on the path to be a teacher many years ago in my teens, I have had the hesitation that "teaching is a looked down upon career". It did not help that in my upbringing, my parents often tell me that "it's nice for a girl to be a teacher", in my practicum, others saying that "if I did not do it for the love of it, with this much education, I could etc etc." My classmates/friends who were academically adept choosing alternative careers. "High school? You don't want to teach university?" And of course, in my workplaces in schools where my innate curiosity and direness to learn often felt under-appreciated - it's childish, I am immature. And people were too busy, or too judgmental, to pay attention to my needs, or scares me off that I swallow what I want to say, respectively.

Is it that people who strive to be teachers are superficial snobs and underachievers? So they can feel good about their ego in front of a more vulnerable group of people - their students. How ironic that in a profession where jadedness, underachievement should be undermined just happens to be the defining characteristic.

An under-appreciation for my intelligence. Not just school smarts, but also my curiosity, perceptiveness, and empathy/people smarts.

Under appreciation sure takes a big bite out of our so-vulnerable dignity, doesn't it?

And my lack of satisfaction with my achievement and over exaggerated ego has led me to a vacuous lack of self-esteem.

Secretly I am grinning and snickering happily at the possibility of being a teaching assistant for one of my favourite undergraduate courses for my next co-op term. I am day dreaming of spending my last term happily doing my favourite thing, teaching, showing off, talking to people, underachieving, staying in the comfort zone, and living in the cozy, familiar -40 degrees winter in Waterloo, Ontario.

But my own hand just slapped my own face.

It's 30 degrees in Phoenix, Arizona. I'm off to the conference, see you all soon!