Teaching jobs VS Corporate jobs (superintendent, private college, cost, salaries)
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I worked as a chemist in industry for 15 years. Switched to teaching over the past 4 years.
Industry:
Pros: Easy work. Good pay. Some satisfaction.
Cons: Corporate game playing baloney. Little time off. Mundane. Not about making good products anymore, its all about business and cutting corners for the bottom line > working for stockholders.
Teaching:
Pros: Shaping young minds. Highly satisfying. Fun. Lots of time off.
Cons: Pay. Long hours. Kids that are a discipline problem because their parents suck at parenting.
Overall I would never go back to working in industry. Things have changed there over the past couple decades. I worked for a highly popular and respected coatings company that has been around for 100 years. They used to make good product and took pride in that. But now it's not about good products, it's about how to get our stocks to rise, and that means lower quality and outsourcing jobs.
Teaching is great, but not for everyone. I try to inspire my students to think about careers in science and try to have fun doing it. I love being a role model for them and enjoy the day to day activity in a high school, it is exciting and different everyday. I work much harder as a teacher than I ever did working in industry, and if anyone thinks otherwise, I suggest you spend a few days in a school.
As I like to tell my friends and family, teaching is twice the work at half the pay, but 10 times more satisfying.
One of the things I miss the most from industry is that my evenings and weekends were mine to do as I wished. While vacation time was scarce, I had more time off when you consider evenings and weekends. I don't feel the large block of time in the summer makes up for the long hours during the school year. I had two days this week when I got home after 9:00 PM. I SHOULD be grading lab reports right now but I'm tired. It was a very long week.
I would like teaching a lot more if some of that summer time was sprinkled throughout the year. I don't need 10 weeks during the summer to recharge. I'm good after 5 or 6 but I sure could use some of that time by November and March. I get caught up over Christmas break but I'm usually quite behind on grading by then. Ditto for Spring break. I have yet to actually take a vacation over spring break.
Job satisfaction: I absolutely LOVE teaching. I go home at the end of the day exhausted, but happy.
OP, note well! This is the post of someone who has been "called" and has responded.
If you do not have the "call," do not go into teaching. The kids will eat you alive! The college students will eat you alive if you try to be an adjunct. There are several threads around here on that topic.
However, if you are "called," other jobs just won't cut it.
I have a miserable co-worker right now who badly needs to be back in the classroom but doesn't want to take the salary cut to do it. I've spent several lunches going over the numbers and showing how getting a cheaper car and moving into a small condo could allow for a significant decrease in pay, but that's falling on deaf ears, although probably not for much longer because the next project is going to push this person's patience over the cliff.
It takes a lot of time preparing for the lessons and attend to extra curricular activities if you teach full-time. Especially if you're working with a college with less students. It means more subject to teach and more preparations to do if you really want to have quality teaching. Further more you are required to do researches and finish Phd.
In corporate world, at least I can sleep when I'm at home already.
I just spent some time counseling someone with a Ph.D. who tried the corporate world and was ready, after 6 months, to head back into the research-oriented academic world, despite the pay cut. I love counseling people like this. To her, the words "follow your heart" needed no additional backing or explanation. She saw what the non-academic world had to offer, and she didn't need convincing that after 2, 3, 5, 10, or 20 years it would not get much better. She'd be living for her bank account and her bank account only.
The corporate/government/cubicle/openofficespace world truly sucks. It is a soul-sapping, stultifying, "I give up" existence devoted solely to money, despite the fairy tales that one might tell oneself about how meaningful the work is if you look at it the right way. It's a world laced with large houses, alcohol, and other "stuff" you reach for to get you through the night. Each night. Every night. On your way to some hoped-for time when you can "get back" to what you should have been doing all along if you had had the courage to follow your dreams.
I just spent some time counseling someone with a Ph.D. who tried the corporate world and was ready, after 6 months, to head back into the research-oriented academic world, despite the pay cut. I love counseling people like this. To her, the words "follow your heart" needed no additional backing or explanation. She saw what the non-academic world had to offer, and she didn't need convincing that after 2, 3, 5, 10, or 20 years it would not get much better. She'd be living for her bank account and her bank account only.
The corporate/government/cubicle/openofficespace world truly sucks. It is a soul-sapping, stultifying, "I give up" existence devoted solely to money, despite the fairy tales that one might tell oneself about how meaningful the work is if you look at it the right way. It's a world laced with large houses, alcohol, and other "stuff" you reach for to get you through the night. Each night. Every night. On your way to some hoped-for time when you can "get back" to what you should have been doing all along if you had had the courage to follow your dreams.
Follow your dreams.
I don't remember you talking to me about this Oh, wait a minute.. there must be others out there who are going through the same exact thing. I thought I was the only one..!
The corporate world is killing me softly. I am dying on the inside and all I can think of is the contributions I made while working in academia and could be making had I decided to pursue a career in academia.
I want to leave the corporate world. Screw the pay cut. I don't care. I want my life back. Soul Sapping is a term that hits the proverbial nail on the head.
Also, screw the SF Bay area and it's competitiveness. I rue the day I moved here. At least I learned a HUGE lesson. It doesn't matter what degree you have... follow your heart! Don't chase a job (or area) for prestige. It is a far greater price to pay.
The corporate world is killing me softly. I am dying on the inside and all I can think of is the contributions I made while working in academia and could be making had I decided to pursue a career in academia.
I want to leave the corporate world. Screw the pay cut. I don't care. I want my life back. Soul Sapping is a term that hits the proverbial nail on the head.
All I can say is that it is much easier for me to counsel others *not* to follow in my footsteps, not to sacrifice dreams for money. I wasn't able to do that...yet.
I don't have any answers in my own life. Other people's lives? Easy.
She says "wake up, it's no use pretending"
I'll keep stealing, breathing her.
Birds are leaving over autumn's ending
One of us will die inside these arms
Eyes wide open, naked as we came
One will spread our ashes 'round the yard
She says "If I leave before you, darling
Don't you waste me in the ground"
I lay smiling like our sleeping children
One of us will die inside these arms
Eyes wide open, naked as we came
One will spread our ashes round the yard
I have worked in the US Military, the Federal Government, A Fortune 100 company, and am winding up, this spring, 10 years teaching. As I often say, I heard the call, I wish I had not answered. I wish I did not know how poorly managed the education system in this county has become.
Therefore, the first thing that comes to mind is the abysmally terrible...keep adding bad adjectives of "management/leadership" in the school systems from district, state, federal -- the whole lot. They are horrible, incompetent, just awful. You have the pleasures teaching under assault from every bad management decision that one can conceive. Black holes of thought, creativity, competence run rampant in the ranks of education administrators. They are horribly disconnected from the classroom, mostly by choice.
The second thought that comes to mind is how easy it is for a terrible teacher to exists in the school system. Very easy.
The third thing that comes to mind is that in teaching, you are ALWAYS on center stage. Back in my "executive" days, if I was feeling bad, I would have my secretary or assistants hold calls, reschedule meetings, work from home, whatever. When you are a classroom teacher, the 2nd block bell is wringing at 10:05 and here they come.
The fourth thing that comes to mind, (and this dot not affect me, since at this point and age, I don't care what administrators think) is that in teaching you are evaluated, or at least tried to be evaluated, on what little children do. At least in business and government, you are responsible for people who, for the most part, see a big picture and whose frontal lobes have developed. In education, most of the people you are teaching have not reached a state of mental development where they have any idea about the consequences of their action or lack thereof, but you are evaluated. It is insane, and not effective.
The fifth thing is that in teaching and to some degree in military and even in government, the money you make is pretty dependent on when your parents conceived you, as most significant pay raises are keyed to time in service, and hence your age. Business, at least the cutting edge companies with whom I associated, paid on performance not on birthdate and I loved that.
Teaching, and again, to some extent government service, tend to attract relatively docile, low risk takers. Conversations, professional, that is, are often duels of point and defense, point and defense. In business we would scream at each other frequently about business topics, then go out and party like rock stars. I have found in education, people lack the self esteem and the drive to be able to have a heated profession conversation and then be done with it.
Lastly, though, in teaching, every now and then a kid says something that really makes you realize you have affected the child in a very positive way, that you have made a real difference. That is about the only positive in teaching, but it is a big one.
in teaching, you are ALWAYS on center stage. Back in my "executive" days, if I was feeling bad, I would have my secretary or assistants hold calls, reschedule meetings, work from home, whatever. When you are a classroom teacher, the 2nd block bell is ringing at 10:05 and here they come.
In some fields, not in mine. A good number of science grads prefer teaching because there is better pay, better benefits, better job security, there actually is time off rather than not get paid for vacation and Holidays. I'd totally go for it if I felt teaching is something I would be OK doing for the rest of my life. I just don't like the babysitting/force feeding knowledge aspects to it. I am also not so fond of grading.
You and I disagree on this time and time again. I get that YOU are having a hard time with your degree making a living. But that does not make the pay better for a teacher.
The fact that science education is one of the few areas where there are not hundreds of qualified applicants for each opening shows you sentiment to be untrue. We graduate kids who major and graduate in science (some 95% who go into science majors graduate within 5 years) and more than 70% of them end up with jobs in the field.
For example:
Biologist (BS) $44K 1st year
Teacher (BS) $36K 1st year
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Oh, wait a minute.. there must be others out there who are going through the same exact thing. I thought I was the only one..!
