comments:
Higher education is a terrible deal. As a professor you'll probably make less money, have worse benefits or none at all, have worse hours, and also never have job security. It's a really bad gig. High school teachers have it much better in those regards typically. I agree with other comments here that kids seem to be shittier now than they used to be (I could talk all day about the failures of current American parenting and screens); that being said, everyone has a hard time with classroom management and emotional burnout the first year. It gets easier year to year as you build tools and get better at teaching. Experience is the only way to work through some of the things you're feeling. I'm still learning but it's far easier now than it used to be. I too had a hard time getting kids to take me seriously as a young female teacher and found that wearing suits and button downs went a long way in helping that, unfortunately. I started teaching the Pandemic year and had a hellish second year coming back from that. For what it's worth, this is a book that helped me out a ton in establishing healthier boundaries around my job and building more emotional resiliency and separation from my students: https://a.co/d/091AudfZ I'm on year 7 of high school now and my formula for survival so far has been to never emotionally invest more in a kid than they invest in my class, be satisfied with being a good teacher who never works past contract hours or brings work home (rather than an overachiever who is there until 7), grade the absolute bare minimum, and to prioritize getting good sleep and exercise. And most days now I really, really love my job and love working with teens and can see their charms much more than their flaws.