When a job wrecks you

I do try to focus on the present b/c my present is great! But the teaching experience has sneaky ways of constantly reasserting itself in my life.

It didn't work out for a variety of reasons, the majority of which were not my fault/out of my control. Still, this knowledge doesn't help me from feeling like a failure b/c I couldn't stick it out.

It's just occuring to me as of late that besides just being a bad time and repository of unbelievable tales, this "job" has scarred me and needs more "processing" (stupid therapy terms).

I just wonder how other people have dealt with bad jobs taking them over. I've always felt, in general, that jobs are ultimately just jobs and when not good, you should walk away and pursue happier climes. Which is ultimately what I did with this one but the bastard refuses to go away.

I agree with Maria: more power to you if you can get out of your miserable situation and actively move to a better one.

xp

Molly, that would def. bother me out too. Luckily I wasn't the indirect cause of any of kids being taken out by ambulance. Although once I did call CPS after one kid told me things that caused me to suspect abuse. He had made me promise not to tell and after CPS went and got them he asked me if I had told. I had to lie to his face that I didn't. :(

Lauren, re: special case you may be right. I think part of the problem is I treated this like some sort of moral calling rather than just work so even then could never escape it. Other teachers who seemed to be doing fine had this ability to leave everything in the classroom that I could never master.

I appreciate that just walking away isn't an option sometimes, so let me say that I sympathise with you and your bloke an enormous amount and I'm sorry to hear it's bringing up bad stuff for you. But your best bet is to focus on where you're at now. I just look back at my old job and breathe a sigh of relief that I'm not doing it any more.

Multiple, multiple x-posts

I'm having a lot of trouble lately. I work for myself, for one client because I'm too lazy to look for more and it pays pretty well. The client is a bimonthly magazine, and my work routine used to be "work hard for a month, take it easy for a month." Now it's more like "work like an insane person for 20 days in constant fear of being found out as a fraud and a slacker, then hide from the phone for 40 days in constant fear of being found out as a fraud and a slacker." I'm scared to leave the house for fear of missing something important that would cause the house of cards to fall, and my work computer is the same as my entertainment computer, so I sit here all day and all evening, getting zero exercise and ballooning in weight, obsessively refreshing ILX and a few other websites.

Couple of days ago the big boss called with good news -- more work! A second magazine (quarterly) and a couple of annual projects worth about a grand each. Wow, I said, that's excellent, I said, can't wait, I said, then hung up and crawled under my desk for a little while.

I would be thrilled about my work situation if there were any flesh-and-blood friends in my life or anything to do in this godforsaken town other than stare at internets or the tv.

Need to work on your barside manner though.

Miss Misery, maybe because you saw teaching as some kind of vocation, rather than as just a job, not doing it has hit you hard because you still feel you want to be of use and to help people? Would volunteering in a literacy programme or teaching English or anything like that on a one to one basis help you out of that feeling, or would that just be too awful to contemplate?

I can't really empathize, because I am one of those people that when the going gets tough in a job, I get lost.

I was talking to J. about this last night, and we agreed: I have to set office hours and get the fuck away from the computer. Plus, I want to travel a bit more in downtimes, two or three small trips a year aside from any major travel. See friends, show up for some FAPs. J. has a hard time relating to this, since she hates leaving the house, but understands that it means a lot to me.

xpost, Accentmonkey, yep yep yep.

And now I'm going to be a labor and employment attorney and spend my days making a living extracting my revenge.

Yeah, that's more what I was thinking of, rather than going to a school and teaching a class. I spent about two years teaching one-on-one in an adult literacy centre, and it was great.

I have been thinking of shelter voulnteer lately! It makes G. sad but I love going up there with the animals.

Of course I don't have a car right now which makes any volunteering next to impossible.

I had a similar experience—not of sexism/racism, but of coming into a dream job, a plant-nursery job (twice in a row) that I was really good at and having it ruined by a bullying manager and a bullying business owner, respectively. I always overstay in miserable jobs, too, some sort of stupid loyalty, so it was YEARS of misery. Now, like Rock, I'm self-employed and not working enough. I'm a landscaper, so there's a long idle spell in the cold months. And I so wary of taking on a new client who might turn out to be a nightmare, that I really don't have enough jobs now. I'm actually going back to work, part-time, in one of the nurseries I used to work in, because the bully is gone. It was sold and the new manager is a sweetheart. I'll work there a few days a week, and keep a couple of my landscaping jobs. I HATE the whole selling-myself aspect of self-employment. Explaining my bills, explaining to people why they need to spend the money. Ech.
I think that working part-time for a business and part-time for myself MIGHT BE THE MAGIC KEY TO HAPPINESS!!!!

This aptly describes my working life from 1992-present.

This was my first job, six years crammed into a 12' x 50' trailer with four chainsmokers and a bunch of carcinogenic phototypesetter chemical fumes.

Oh, God, that's a good idea!

A bad, stressful job will always be with you, even after you leave it. The most important thing is to leave it. Then it will become a stressful bad memory and not a horrible reality you must go to every day.

Resolving those memories is not easy, but it is much easier if you have stopped adding to them and can resolve them retrospectively. This takes time and it takes facing them over and over again when they come up. You can shorten this process by doing it deliberately, by sitting down with a friend and talking about them, or sitting alone and writing about them. Repeat this until they gradually lessen their emotional force.

However, very few people are willing to purposely retrieve these bad memories and face them, so they wait until outer circumstances force the memories to the surface and they can't be avoided. This is quite normal, but often inconvenient, too, since the memories tend to surface during stressful and difficult times that require clear thinking, not being jerked around by old memories of past circumstances.

ergh.

As for going postal, go right ahead do it, but in a safe place where the consequences are limited - such as a cellar or a closet or the middle of an empty woods. Just don't get anywhere near the people you really want to hurt or you might really hurt them.

It can help a lot to chop wood, provided you don't get clumsy and chop your foot. Karate-style screaming is also encouraged as you destroy the defenseless block of wood.

Well, sometimes you can't do everything and you have to quit. I quit grad school for reasons of being stressed, overwhelmed, and unable to cope, and it took me quite a long time to not find it too painful to even think about because I suppose.. when I started, the notion that I wouldn't do well was.. so shameful to me as to be utterly beyond the realm of possibility. I didn't want other people to know that I had tried to do something and failed at it. But, I did. c la vie

I think this is a big part of it. No matter how much my logical mind tries to make peace with why it didn't work out, my emotional mind is screaming "FAILURE!!". argh, therapy.

aimless, I want to harm my guy's mgmt! they are slowly killing him and I want to relieve them of their miserable selves for his sake. :)

I've had a lot of horrible job experiences but once I stop the job I don't really think of them anymore. I've wondered about it before, like that was so awful and now I don't even care.

One of my husband's pre-your's-truly girlfriends left a lot of pottery-spoor around the house when she departed. Even more fun to smash THAT shit. And easy to do because it WAS shit!

So relate to that Jess. I keep thinking my jobs suck, but I think it might be my attitude or my inability to handle stress and customers, or something. I get angry/wound up fairly easily; I'm loud, I get really nervous and babbly when I have to deal with/lie to angry clients. It doesn't help that my current job is underpaying me for basically being a manager, with no support structure. Ive been here 2 years and have never had a performance review, pay rise, job description document or even a contract!

But, I can't complain. My b/f's last job was at an insane start up games company who we now suspect were (and are) pulling some kind of scam. He was paid 20k per annum (AUD) and working between 60-80 hours a week. Sometimes he'd work for more than 24 hours straight. For about 4 months they weren't paid at all. We also dont think the company paid his income taxes or super to the govt, so now we have this ugly "what if" legal shit hanging over our heads too :(

Thank fuck he's at a really good games co now in a really respected position.

I have to fill out something called an ALP--"Annual Learning Plan"--before Dec. 15. We do this every year; it's basically a summary of how you're going to "grow" as a teacher this year. What I want to tell my principal:

"Do I need to do this? I'm out the door next April, maybe June if it's a good year--you've got to put up with me for another year and a bit and that's it. The last two years have been incredibly difficult, triggered by a really dumb decision to switch grades. I'm limping to the finish line. My goal for this year is to muddle through. That will also be my goal for next year. That's the beginning, middle, and end of my ALP."

everything ok?

Pestering your principal with the unvarnished truth will put them in a bind. He can't really let you escape the bureaucratic demands that he is required to make of you without looking bad by doing it. Probably better to just spew some platitudes. If that isn't good enough, then maybe set some nice-sounding goals and then not worry if you meet them, because by the time the machinery of evaluation has started to grind again, you'll be a free bird.

He can't

Sorry. A pronoun escaped captivity and ran amok.

i am generally in favor of giving admins pablum and saving your realness for the classroom, but that's me

Same--I've been dutifully putting down teacher-ese nonsense on the ALP for 15 years. (I know of at least one guy who rotates the same ALP every two or three years.) They disappear into a file, never to be looked at again.

My bigger problem is the muddling through. I did 15 years of grade 6-7, got to where I was comfortable--far from great, but I at least knew what I was doing, or felt like I did--then had the brilliant idea that I'd go back down to grade 3 for my last three years, where we'd sit in a circle and I'd dispense all my wisdom to quiet, wide-eyed children. Except I'd a) forgotten how different this age group is, and b) forgotten how to teach in general. Combined with lots of other factors, I was completely unprepared for the change. I got depressed about it last year, but I've forced myself not to give in to that this year. Come April, I'll have one year to go. So the finish line is in sight.

My principal is indeed a woman. She's good, and new, but more of a by-the-book person than what I'd become accustomed to--one of those other factors.