Why Changing Careers is Like Changing Your Pants

See what you like, find what fits, and wiggle in until you look good and feel better.

This year I’ve had to make some life-changing decisions. I’ve had to take a leap into the unknown using my instincts, and had to take major career risks. But now, months later, I’m the happiest, healthiest, and proudest I’ve been in my life. So, what happened?Every morning for the last 5 years, it felt like a ticking time bomb leading up to an explosion of high intensity, attention, and stress. In my profession, I dealt with minute-by-minute lesson plans, angry emails and phone calls, standardized testing, administrator walkthroughs, perfectly displayed benchmarks on your board, and hungry and broken children that didn’t get the help they needed. I was ready for anything that flew at me, including paper balls. It was the life of a middle school educator.It was always in my nature to inspire young students. I loved to see the world through a 13-year-old’s eyes, and empower them to choose a path in science or technology. So why leave? The expectations, standards, and lack of respect for the teaching profession killed it for me, and before I knew it, the light at the end of the tunnel was dimming. Quick. Every year I grew more weary, and seasoned teachers urged, “Get out while you can!”

Decisions, decisions: Hitting the fitting room

Being in your 20s, you see many emerging careers. After researching new options and warming up to the idea of completely uprooting my life, an opportunity to intern as a producer here at PRPL hit me in the face, and I gladly accepted the wake-up call. The passion for tech was already there, and I realized that the very qualities that made me a good teacher would transcend job titles.During the internship, which (surprise!) later turned into full-time employment, I uncovered several uncanny parallels between project management and education, and on the flip-side, aspects new to me that 9-to-5ers take for granted.

Similarities between teaching and project management:

• Clients are to parents as projects are to students.My key performance indicators and metrics for a project are the students’ gains from year to year. And trust me, those 120 students were real projects. Data data data—being a woman of science and math, balancing budgets and keeping track of data is a treat. Being accountable is something that transcends both jobs and most careers. You must be confident in your choices and execution.
• Time management for the win!Teaching, I had every minute planned. If you had free time in the classroom, you had a back up plan and plenty of engagement activities. When we get a new project at PRPL, I analyze it the same way. By setting up timelines, check-in meetings with the client, team reviews, and, well, homework, I still must ensure that no resource or clients’ time gets wasted, in or outside the workplace.
• Is that in scope?Scope is so much more than mouthwash. I was initially excited when I heard the term “scope” in an agency setting, because we teachers had to work in the “scope” of the curriculum. Teaching beyond scope allows you to incorprate learning that’s “outside” of the textbook, but it takes up valuable instruction time. Similarly, adding bells and whistles to a project that weren’t in the statement of work is considered will inevitably affect the timeline and resources, which all equate to money.

Things I know never to take for granted:

• Mornings at my pace.Having a relaxed morning to settle in, enjoy coffee, schedule my own meetings and not get thwarted into chaos the moment I walk into a building. Twelve year olds are surprisingly the most hyper at nine o’clock in the morning! Grownups, not so much.
• Lunch is a time.At school, you have 20 minutes between the kids leaving your room and the next period coming back. If you wanted to eat with a co-worker that makes lunch 10 minutes. Most of the time, you are tutoring students, making up tests, or heating up your food, and by the time you pick up a fork, there are kids beating down your door to get in. Now, I can take that time, or use it, but it’s there.
• Working from home.There is always work to be done in both careers, tasks to catch up on, lessons to perfect, emails to answer, and paperwork to fill out. The difference is that you can't do those types of tasks when you’re actually teaching; there is literally not enough time in the “work day.” When teaching, I’ve even used sick time just to work from home. Now, in a more digital-based career, I can work remote if I need to get out of the office and focus.
• Time off.Instead of two months “off,” I have two days and five nights of vacation every week! My week nights and weekends consisted of planning, meetings, emails, phone calls, and grading papers, and the guilt of leaving my students with a substitute teacher kept me from even making a dentist appointment during the school year. The time off for a company is completely different: you just get your work done and use your vacation time when you want. You can have your “summer,” I’ll take my evenings back.

The teaching profession will always be around, and educators truly deserve tons of respect. Might I ever go back? Sure. But working with such an amazing group of people these last few months confirms that I made the right decision for this point in my life.Changing careers was not easy. I had to make a quick choice and see what best suited my skillset. I feel very fortunate to have been given the opportunity to explore, and am proud to have landed this sweet gig at Purple, Rock, Scissors.No career is one size fits all, so for those looking for a change, I say, get to shopping and strut your stuff.