People often have lots of different career paths and jobs before settling into one that they enjoy.
Science teacher Karen Truesdell experienced this before becoming a teacher.
I had a lot of different jobs, Truesdell said.
“Primarily, I was a student, because after I graduated from high school, I was a student the whole time,” Truesdell said. “I needed to pay the bills because I was paying for my school.”
Truesdell was a lab technician at her community college, she said.
“It was part-time,” Truesdell said. “ I liked really getting to understand the labs, because I had taken the class the year before and then I got the part-time job, so I had to really understand how to do each of the techniques that it takes in order to set up the lab for students to participate in.”
She wanted to have a service job and a lab job, and teaching was perfect for that, Truesdell said.
“The lab tech part of me – that’s not spending time with people,” Truesdell said. “It’s much more fun to spend time with people and make sure things are understood.”
Most of the jobs he had were part-time jobs because he was a full-time student, social studies teacher Paul Harrison said.
“The first job I really had was working at a gas station,’ Harrison said. “I started at the gas station in high school, and then I worked in a garage while I was in college.
Harrison later got a better job, he said.
“I actually worked (part-time) at Stanford Hospital, and this was a great job,” Harrison said. “I did data entry in the respiratory therapy department, and so you would have to enter medical records.“
The job had a lot of flexibility, Harrison said.
“What was nice about the job is that I can go in at any time, as long as it got done,” Harrison said. “I didn’t really have to clock in. I loved it because I was getting my teaching credential and could be at school during the day and then go in whenever I needed to.”
The job provided basic training, Harrison said.
“It’s one of those things that once you start learning it, you keep doing it, you get better at it, but it’s one of those jobs that I could never do for the rest of my life because it would be so boring,” Harrison said. “I realized I like working with my mind a lot more.”
Harrison decided to become a teacher in his junior year of high school because of a really good history teacher he had, he said.
“I want to be able to talk about history and then be able to have adventures in the summer,” Harrison said. ”Not many jobs give you the time that teaching gives you, where you can go and do these other things, and I like that about teaching.”
Science teacher Glen Barrett worked in the electricity industry, he said.
“I worked at a green power, little startup,” Barrett said. “We worked 24/7, and I put in half-hour orders from places that wanted to buy electricity.”
The job destroyed his internal clock, Barrett said.
“The hours were mind-bogglingly bad,” Barrett said, “and the work was fine, but repetitive and boring.”
With teaching, it’s different every day, and it’s more fulfilling, Barrett said.
“I feel like I’m doing something that matters in the world,’ Barrett said. “I think the biggest thing I learned in bouncing between careers is, if you’re in a career, and even if you’re making good money, if you’re not happy, keep trying until something sticks.”