New beginnings

Last weekend I was privileged enough to meet more than 20 other younger cancer patients in their 20s   30s or 40s as part of a fabulous weekend of activities.  Each of the participants has experienced a cancer diagnosis at some point as a young adult and as such were all on the same wavelength. 

One of the sessions I attended focused upon work, after 15 months off sick I am getting to a place physically and mentally where I want and can think about returning to work. I had been in a quandary for a while about what I want to do, unsure if I want to return to what I trained to do or if I want to break  off and do something different.  Cancer changes your priorities and so much about teaching just doesn't seem important to me. One of the activities in the work session was helping people in our small groups see through their question. Well, my peers suggested a pros/cons list, careers questionnaires and then trying out those suggestions. 

In the last week I have completed my pros/cons list for staying in teaching where each point was rated 1-10.  My pros for staying in teaching scored  a mere 60oints  the cons, 140 points. I will repeat in a month, but it seems pretty conclusive, teaching is no longer important to me.  I have looked online at jobs, amd I have found jobs that excite me in the ways I got excited about applying for teaching posts. 

So today we start a new beginning, I'm not Thirteen the Teacher, but I'm Thirteen, a daughter, a partner, a friend, a leader, a swimmer, a singer, a listener, a survivor.

Don't be labelled by your job, you are not your job, you are so much more than it. I feel often we are led to think success is determined by your job, by the label, doctor, nurse, teacher, solicitor. But are we really "successful" if we have achieved those positions? 

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts" Winston Churchill 

"Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome"  Booker T Washington 

Every day  leads to a new tomorrow, another opportunity to start something new, but don't wait until tomorrow to start living. 

 

    The celebratory I've completed my first 1km walk since surgery! 

What do I want to do?

Ever since I was very small I wanted to be a teacher,  it was my focus my passion.  

As a Brownie leader while at school it secured this thoughts and further work experience sealed the deal. I really had to be a teacher.  Despite my struggles at school I got through my GCSEs and A levels,  got to university where we found I was dyslexic, I still had this desire to teach, to share the way I access the world and make school a better experience for others. 

I graduated with a 2:I and went on to do my PGCE. We then moved to a new area and I did supply work to get my face known and to settle in to life in a new city, a vast difference from a small seaside town. I got my first job, to start my NQT, then I got sick. 

I was put in a position where I pretty much had to decide health or job, (this was before we knew how serious my illness was) I chose health, I was told I'd regret it. 

So now, I'm at a point a year on, where I'm thinking what I want to do, I'm still unfit to go back to teaching, and probably would not be in a position to do so until next September, however I'm unsure. Do I want to? My passion and talents lie in teaching the youngest children, but I can't get down on the floor, I can't be on their level, I can't sit on the little chairs, I can't tie shoelaces or do little buttons, all things that are important, yet going into. Key stage 2 I get frightened by my dyslexia as I don't want to mark things correct that are incorrect as I've transposed numbers and words. 

Do I even want to go back into a school? The thought sends me scared, terrified actually, do I want to be in that environment that I nearly pushed me into sacrificing my life as that is what the end result could have been if I'd succumbed to the pressure. 

Then I think if I don't teach, what do I want to do? I've got £30,000 of student loan debt in order to become a teacher and it seems such a waste to throw that away. I think I want a job I can leave at work. Where my home time is home time and I can spend it with my lovely partner. I wish there was an easy solution, a magic ball to give me the answer or someone to guide me through this desicion. I want to feel some sort of satisfaction from my job, but I wider what will give me that.