Career Change – A Teacher’s Story Who Can’t Cook Meth

By Andrew L. Adler

Feeling burnt out and unhappy in your career? Don’t throw in the towel just yet. 

Changing careers^[1], especially as a teacher, can be a scary proposition, but it’s a necessary step for many of us in order to find the fulfillment and happiness we deserve in our work. 

As someone who took the plunge and changed careers at age 30, I understand the fears and doubts that come with making a career change.

But during my career change, I recognized the valuable skills and experiences I had that could be transferred to a new career. 

So, after much contemplation and soul-searching, I decided to go for it and pursue a new career path. 

It wasn’t a cakewalk, but with determination and hard work, I was able to find a career that I am passionate about and that allows me to make a positive impact on the world.

If you’re considering a career change, don’t let fear or doubt hold you back. 

Take the time to reflect on your transferable skills and what you are truly passionate about, and don’t be afraid to take the bull by the horns and chase your dreams. 

As the saying goes, “the only thing you’ll regret is the things you didn’t do.

How I knew It Was Time For A Career Change

Loving your own rebellious teenage child is hard enough; now imagine handling a class full of teenagers.

Still, these hormonal psychopaths can be excused, but school administrators are usually the last nail in the coffin of many school teachers’ careers.

It was the same for me. 

Lack of funding, lack of support, and a long list of problems that start with LACK made the job unbearable for me.

My state license started to look more like a cage than something I was proud of.

Fun fact: the average Wellbeing score among teachers^[2] is 38.7, where a score below 41 indicates a high chance of probable clinical depression.

I didn’t know the statistics then, but I did know what I was feeling.

After much deliberation, I made my decision. I didn’t know what else I could do yet, but I was sure: I would rather drag my balls through glass than spend my life stuck in this lousy job.

Some might hate me for calling the teaching profession a lousy job, but if you look at the stats^[3], you’ll see my point.

Transferable Skills I Got From My Current Job

When changing careers, companies, industries, jobs, and so on, it is critical to understand what transferable skills you have gained from your current job.

My exhausted brain couldn’t just figure it out, and my current salary didn’t provide enough money to afford a good personal career consultant.

So I had to figure it out all by myself and make a list of my transferable skills. I suggest you do the same.

Leadership Skills

This skill comes naturally in the education sector. A teacher is a coach, a guide for young minds full of physical energy. Without leadership skills, I think the kiddos will chew me up and spit me out.

Being friends with them is nice and all, but sometimes you must show who’s the boss if you want to survive this job and do something that will add value to your students’ lives

Organization Skills

This goes without saying. You can’t exactly go willy-nilly in a classroom full of students without an action plan. 

You have students with different capabilities all mixed in together who catch things at different rates.

You have to make sure that even the weakest kids get something, without hurting the smart ones. After you understand the class’s average, you make your curriculum according to that.

There are a thousand other tasks just for students; then there are your coworkers and boss (usually multiple bosses with different designations).

So juggling all of this gave me some unique skills that are required in any organization.

Presentation Skills

Everything a teacher does is a presentation. Presenting students with what they have to learn and why, presenting my performance to the administration so I don’t lose my job, and presenting my students’ performances to the parents so the administrators don’t lose their jobs

So it’s safe to say I had confidence in this skill.

Creativity

I won’t even talk in detail about this skill teachers possess because anyone outside of this industry won’t appreciate it and anyone inside this industry already knows all about it.

Making the most out of every situation can’t be done just by being prepared; a sprinkle of creativity is a must every day in classrooms.

Attention To Detail

This is a must-have skill not just for teachers but for everyone in the education industry. 

One wrong move or one poorly worded sentence can harm the little devils we are in charge of. Not picking up when a student has made a mistake can give them the wrong message for life.

Communication Skills

You need at least some level of competency in this skill for any job, especially in this profession, and I knew it was going to be my best selling point.

I’ve been communicating with Childs, Man Childs and Elderly Childs on a daily basis for years. 

I got this.

Resourcefulness

School administrators will often forget that you are not the one providing the services that the school requires. 

They complain about paying through their nose, which shouldn’t be a teacher’s headache, but they do require the results these services provide.

So oftentimes, teachers have to bite the bullet and be as resourceful and creative as possible so their students don’t miss out on a learning opportunity because of budgetary cuts.

Both Independent and Collaborative

Collaboration is a must with your coworkers and higher-ups in any profession. Someone in the teaching profession also had to work with students and parents.

Still, as Americans, we value individuality, and teachers are excellent independent workers. Teachers have to guide so many people in their lives that they themselves can function without much oversight.

My Next Career Move

After a whole year of knowledge gathering on career change and also helping some co-workers with the same process, I really liked the idea of becoming a Career Consultant. But, like teachers, Career Consultants require a state license^[4]. So, no matter how knowledgeable I became about the subject, I couldn’t just dive in.

Many people suddenly pop up and become that just by calling themselves “career mentors” or “career coaches,”  but I think that can often lead to harming the clients.

This is a profession that can have a direct impact on someone’s ability to feed their family, so jumping right into it after reading some books or articles on the internet may not be the best idea. 

So becoming a career consultant required time, and as my family refused to stop eating food till I could get the license and liked the roof over their heads (me too!!!), this profession was not an option for me then.

Having multiple careers^[5] wasn’t an option either.

As much as I started hating my job, I was still in charge of some kids’ education. Having a night job will make it very hard for me to give these kids the good education they deserve.

Solution?

Switching my career to an industry with unusual flexibility.

I was desperate enough to teach in the morning and cook meth at night, but luckily Breaking Bad was not out yet, so this didn’t cross my mind.

The only thing hotter than meth was The Tech Boom^[6], more commonly known as the Dot Com Bubble^[7].

So, I jumped on that bandwagon. 

No, I didn’t open a startup company or invest in a get-rich-quick scheme, but all these internet startups will need a website, and I made my first successful career move out of it.

Best Part Of Having A Digital Career

The best part of my new endeavor was that my clients weren’t teenagers; they didn’t throw a fit when something went wrong; they didn’t fight with my other clients over nothing; and I didn’t have to send them to the headmaster (the government, maybe?).

But jokes aside here’s some advantages I found which I’ve never seen before in any career – 

• There’s always the option of learning by doing. My clients can’t be on my neck when I’m home and they won’t see me panic reading some coding book for websites while stuck on a stupid problem and now people have Google and YouTube. 

• These days, I see people complain about other people offering what they are offering for much cheaper. Well they will be surprised to know, it has always been the issue for every business out there ALWAYS. Have some value that only you can offer personally, and clients will flock to you no matter how cheaply someone else is doing it.

• Digital means tech, and there’s always some new tech out the horizon. You don’t get stuck with only career options. You can change, you can switch, you can shift and mix and match.

• It usually pays well. Many will refute it and say tech stuff can be made overseas for much cheaper but it can’t be furthest than the truth. I’ve worked with a thousand overseas White Label^[8] agencies in my life, very few understand what is needed by an American or European client.

• The flexibility is astounding. It’s hard at first and if you don’t become a coding monkey, every tech job I had or has seen people doing, become incredibly flexible once you know what you’re doing. Most clients don’t even care if you’ve worked 60 hours or 6. If you can bring even a mediocre result, you’re far ahead than the 80%.

• Low competition. Now listen carefully before you lose your mind over recent tech layoffs^[9] or competition from overseas. If you become good at your trade and know what you’re doing, tech recruiters won’t stop harassing you and you might need to spend some time everyday blocking them in social media.

• Very easy to start a business. Every business owner is not just happy with their best employees, they are scared because they know this employee will start the same business and become a competitor in the near future. It might need the employee to work there for years to save up enough money and make the right connections, but in tech jobs, it’s a breeze.

It became easier and much more scalable with these many overseas companies. Get the  grunt of the work done by an overseas company, add your personal touch, and Voila!!!                    

Suddenly, you can scale your business like there’s no tomorrow. Many of my competitors     and I have done the same thing with great success over the years.

• Very easy to learn. When I started it, it was quite hard. Still not as hard as most traditional jobs but I had to read many, many and many coding/trade books on my time. Now every information is just a click of some buttons away. If you use this power right, job frustration will not even be on the top 10 problems in your life.

How this Digital Career Strategy Change My Life For The Better

The flexibility in the digital career sphere is unmatched. Working in it lets you gain experience and become an expert in a number of sub-industries^[10].

By the time you’re 40 and have worked in this industry for maybe 5–10 years, you can decide if you want to continue doing what you’re doing or start your own business using the knowledge you’ve gathered here.

I changed my career at 30 and never had to look back. I began with freelance work the first year; by the second year, I had multiple job offers from the companies I was freelancing for, and by the fifth year, I had my own business, which is still running and more successful than the companies I worked for.

This industry is flexible enough that I can earn enough money to hire the best talent and do what I want to do with my life. In my case, becoming a licensed career consultant

It is now much easier to start your own agency business in America by purchasing some software or hiring an overseas white-label agency.

I may have failed to help others by being their teacher and teaching them the ABCs of the world, but I find solace in knowing that whenever my students or anyone else’s students need help with their careers, I will be there to fulfill my original goal of helping others.

How YOU Can Understand It’s Time For A Career Change

There are no hard and fast rules, but you must understand that it is a major decision in your life. Don’t do it because everyone else is, and it may be hyped at the moment^[11]. 

There are three questions I ask every client when they seek my support for a career change.

1. Why did you start thinking about leaving your job?

Making a career move is not exactly a walk in the park; it’s a hard battle. Before getting into this, you should have a long and exhausting talk with yourself in the most unbiased manner possible. Here I’m a listing a few things I ask my clients not to do – 

Making a Career Move Out Of Depression

Many people, when they get depressed, whether clinically^[12] or otherwise, tend to remove themselves from everything. It doesn’t matter what that is; they will desperately try to change things one by one in the hope of finding relief from their sadness. It is really dangerous for the reasons listed below.

1. Your career might not be the source of your problem and leaving a perfectly good career path for a new career has a very low chance of fixing the problem for you.

2. Cognitive bias^[13] can set in when you’re depressed. Even if the solution to your problem is very easy, you’ll miss that completely and think a big decision like a career shift is the only way out.
3. Some personal financing strategy^[14] is needed when changing jobs. Making a career move out of the blue is not recommended at all. Changing careers can put major financial stress on a person and that can lead to more severe depression^[15], not less.

Making a Career Move Because You’re Bored

This is a big mistake. Listening to too many motivational speakers can often harm you. I’ve seen many HRs start thinking about doing sales because sales jobs are often glamorized in Hollywood.

While the glamor can be true, a person in HR and a person in Sales, are often very different kinds of people, with different values. These two jobs ask very different things of the people doing them.

So, don’t try something dramatic like leaving your dream job when a simple long holiday would have sufficed.

Making a Career Move Because Of Jealousy

No one ever admits it, but in my long, 25-year career as a career consultant, I’ve seen how seeing your brother-in-law (or any peer) make a lot more money than you can have an adverse effect on people.

Being jealous or not is your choice, but it’s usually not your career path that’s holding you back from making more money; it’s usually how you do it.

The average salary of a computer programmer in the USA is $73,473 per year^[16]. This is usually not the case, most programmers can’t even get $30k after years of training, hard work, and constant rivalry with the Sun, and fun in life in general.

Whereas an Email Developer, who might take 6 months to train and knows only HTML^[17] and CSS^[18], can make upwards of $150k per year when they become good.

The ceiling for the coder is much higher, of course; when you get good, you can make 10 times as much as an email developer, but I think you get my point.

If your goal is to make $100k, or any number, in a year, ask yourself, “What is holding you back?” 

Industry, or your skills?

If the problem is industry, by all means change it. But if not, I suggest upskilling yourself. In this internet age, it has become much easier with platforms like Coursera^[19] and many others.

If you want something more in-depth from the tech industry, I plan on writing some books and starting some online courses myself.

But that will take time; till then, read my free articles as they come by or take other courses. I will try to list some free and paid resources that are good in the near future.

2. Is your job causing you physical and mental distress?

If so, then changing your job, industry, or career path may be the right move. Many industries^[20] have an adverse mental or physical effect on their workers.

If you read this article^[21] written by Hannah Nicols^[22], the effects can be scary.

We want our careers to fulfill our lives, not be a reason for our early deaths.

Bad supervisor? No room for growth? Undervalued? 

Try your best to leave that place for a better option. No matter how much you’re making there,

3. Are your industry’s values the complete opposite of your personal values?

This is a common occurrence. 

We are willing to sell our souls to the devil to make money when we are young, but as we get older and more mature, we are unable to carry the toll it may take from our spirit.

We find ourselves at complete odds with our personal values and established industry values. We didn’t have the time or opportunity to think about it before, but as we get more complete as a person, this is an unbearable weight.

This is a clear sign for change if you’re experiencing this phenomenon. 

The Perfect Job For You

I don’t want to give you a BS, high thought answer like “No job is perfect” and all that because I know there is.

But I can’t tell you which one it is.

Sorry, I know it sounds like a BS answer too, but with my 25 years of experience, it has shown me that one size doesn’t fit all.

If I have to do a sales job now and clients call me all day every day, I’ll kill myself in 3 weeks, no matter how much money I’m making. My friends who are in sales will literally die of boredom if they have to do what I do and their phone is not constantly ringing.

So it all depends on what you like. 

Now I know you can’t try out every job there is in the world, and even gathering knowledge of most of the jobs, careers, or industries is incredibly time consuming.

My solution?

Take a personality test to narrow down your choices.

Many people will argue that they don’t work or are inaccurate, and that a job aptitude test is preferable. That’s true, but the problem is, aptitude is the last thing I find people struggling with when they are looking for a shift in career.

I’m not telling you to find out if you’re an INTP or a LMAO. 

If you answer all the questions unbiased, you will pass the first threshold of happiness – 

                                                            “KNOW THYSELF”

Just try to understand what type of career might go with your personality and start working from there. I’m not telling you to not try a career that might not go with your personality, just start from there.

You can take a career aptitude test here. 

For your comfort, I’ve decided to put out all the mambo jumbo stuff and will give you only the jobs that might suit you in the answers.

Summary Of This Long Article

To summarize – 

• If your job is putting Unbearable mental and physical stress on you, it’s a sign to leave.

• You MUST have a financial plan in place before embarking on a career change.
• You MUST not take a decision like this while depressed, bored or jealous. I know the feelings can’t just be turned off whenever you feel like it, or it won’t be an issue in the first place but you MUST be absolutely sure you’re sound in mind before making a decision.

• DON’T do it because everyone else is doing it or saying they will do it with you. I’ve seen hundreds of clients who tried doing it because they thought their friends would do it too and find themselves alone in a pickle while their friends keep enjoying a stable job

• You MUST know what your transferable skills are. Even if the skills are not important for your new career, your employer would be mighty impressed when they see your transferable skills on the resume^[23], they will know you’re a type of person that takes gaining skills seriously and will be a valuable addition to his team.

• If you’re unhappy with your current job because it doesn’t go with the type of person you are then take the test to narrow your field.

• Age is a big issue when you’re changing careers. Many unique issues come up with age that can affect your choices. My story is about when I was 30 and I’ve written how I’ve helped my Dad change his career in his 60s. These are my personal experiences. I’ll write about other age groups like 20s,40s,50s and link them in this article. Those are the experiences of my clients and friends, not personal.

If you’re on my subscriber list, I might start sending emails when my blogs are updated or I add a new article. But still not sure how much hassle I’ll take for this, so try to come back and check yourself every now and then.