Today, I have no homework.
My work screen and self switches off at the end of my contracted hours. I do not think about work outside of work. Not in a way in which I have to force myself to leave it at the desk, but in the sense that my work is very literally a strict shift, 5 days a week. I don't do overtime; I don't do study; I don't spend time 'on the road'. In that way, it is wonderful.
Of course there are drawbacks. Non-stimulating work can be dull, you don't feel like you're really making a difference. When there's no progression in the role, it opens up the suggestion that you should search for an alternative vocation. It can, over a longer period of time, be unfulfilling.
But, no homework. My peers cry, they stress, they don't eat, or go out, or socialise with their friends and much of the time, they don't even enjoy their jobs. They wake up at 6am; they travel in an hour of traffic; they don't get home 'til gone 7pm and then it's dinner, TV, bed - and for what? More money? Better job satisfaction? Pride in yourself and your abilities? One friend was complaining to me about not getting *quite* as high a pay-rise as she was expecting from her last set of exams. Understandable that you want to feel like your salary is competitive within your industry, but ultimately - what difference does it make, is money the main reason you're staying in that job? I honestly can't comprehend the idea that more money is worth the amount of stress some people put themselves under, when you already have enough to live a life others would be envious of - it's crazy. Maybe I'm just lazy.
It's back-to-school and this is the year I have felt furthest removed from it all. Younger relatives have become graduates, friends have become doctors and aside from slight lust for an owl pencil-case in WHSmith, I have barely felt the back-to-books fever that usually surrounds the start of the academic year. It's kind of weird that I don't have that marker anymore.
So sometimes, when I'm contemplating where my job, my career, my salary is, five years after I started my masters, I look back. I stand back, I think of all those questions, those essays, those tests that I don't have to do any more and I think how glorious it is to not have to go back to school this September.
Instead, I'm going to Amsterdam.
Flitterbox: George Ezra ~ Budapest
This really resonated with me; I do love many things about teaching, but the thing I hate is the fact of never being able to leave work without a guilty conscience about the piles of unfinished work. I'm really strict about leaving work at school and I almost never bring it home with me, especially not at weekends, but still sometimes I miss the post-uni pre-teaching days, when I always had jobs I could walk away from at 5 and not give them another thought until 9am.
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