Burn, Baby, Burn

Although I’ve been teaching off and on for the past eleven years, my current three-year stint of teaching in Japan has been the longest time I’ve spent teaching at any given location. Admittedly, the past three years have been the longest time I’ve spent working at any given job. Three years may not seem like a long time to most people and definitely not to most in Japan, where lifetime employment is the goal of every new college grad. But to me, three years is a long time… a really, reeeeally loooong time. I guess you could say, I’m the career version of the commitment-phobe. As soon as my job starts to feel a bit too comfortable (maybe my job puts on a few extra pounds or starts burping in front of me or hints around about a ring and kids), I know it’s time to hand in my resignation letter. “It’s not you, it’s me,” I say (while thinking, secretly, of course it’s you, silly! I mean, hello, whatever could be wrong with me?). And then it’s off to another job and another destination… at least for the next 12 to 36 months.

But that’s okay, because Oprah’s got my back. In the November issue of Oprah Magazine, I took the “Who Am I Meant to Be?” Quiz and it turns out I’m meant to be this way! That’s right, Oprah (or, more accurately, Anne Dranitsaris, PhD, the author of the quiz) thinks my true calling is that of a complete and utter flake.

According to the quiz’s introduction, there are seven “striving styles” or modes of thought and behavior, and how we seek personal satisfaction and fulfillment depends on our personal “striving style.” I know this may all sound like just a bunch of hokey, half-baked hooey, but I assure you this is real. I mean the woman who wrote this has a PhD and she says the quiz is based on “personality science” and this all appears in Oprah Magazine… and Oprah doesn’t mess around! (Especially after that whole James Frey incident).

After tediously answering the twenty-eight questions and tallying up my score, I discovered I was a Striving Style #4 or “Striving to be Spontaneous.” According to Dr. Dranitsaris, a Striving Style #4 person is “curious” (yep!), “outgoing” (well, not to toot my own horn, but I have been known to liven up a few parties), “action-oriented” (well, I did just finish a marathon) and “technically gifted” (Ummm, by “technically gifted” do they mean “able to operate most basic household appliances while causing minimal fire damage”? Because then, yes, that’s me!). Striving Style #4 people are happiest when they “change jobs every so often and travel extensively.” Well, okay, Oprah, if you say so! (By the way, Oprah, you think you could write me a letter of recommendation for my next job? You can explain to my future employer that all my job-hopping is not the result of my general lack of direction and commitment, but a sign that I have a “very strong striving style”).

Inevitably because of my so-called “striving style,” I usually start to feel pretty restless when I’m at a job for longer than about two years. But over the past few months, I’ve been feeling not just restless but burnt out. Shortly after the semester started in September, my keen desire to hop out of bed each morning to go teach a bunch of eighteen-year-olds about the wonders of indefinite articles or the joys of the process analysis essay became replaced with a keen desire to stay in bed and stare at the ceiling all the life-long day. I started to feel more and more physically exhausted and emotionally drained.

And, let’s just say, I haven’t exactly been a ray of sunshine around the office. While I’m pretty good at faking enthusiasm in the classroom, I was making no attempts to fake any kind of positive energy while sitting in staff meetings or holed up in my cubicle. While I was sure I could chalk up some of my exhaustion and desire to do absolutely nothing to my on-going marathon training, at the same time I knew something else was going on.

Sure enough, the symptoms I was experiencing (fatigue, anxiety, migraines, increased irritability and frustration, to name a few) matched up with what I started to read on a lot of the websites about teacher burn out. One website listed a host of questions meant to help you determine whether or not you’re experiencing teacher burn out. The questions included “Do you find yourself dreading going to work in the morning?,” “Are you easily annoyed or irritated by your coworkers?”, “Are you envious of individuals who are happy in their work?” “Are you depressed on Sunday afternoons thinking about Monday and the coming week?” I could easily answer yes to all of the questions… but, then again, I suspected most people who have ever held down a job of any sort could probably answer yes to most of the questions (especially that Sunday one! I mean, come on!).

The statistics for teacher burn out are pretty shocking. A New York Times article in 2008 stated that a third of all new teachers in the U.S. leave the profession after a mere three years. After five years, almost half of them have up and quit. These aren’t old, grizzled, surly teachers who are leaving the profession after years of getting older and surlier, but fresh, newly-educated and ready-to-change-the-world teachers. These are people who probably haven’t even paid off their student loans. These are people that still cry during cheesy inspirational teacher movies like Freedom Writers no matter how many times they watch them… and no matter how much Hilary Swank might give them the heebie jeebies (Despite being creeped out by Hilary Swank on occasion, I saw thirty minutes of Freedom Writers this summer and cried the entire time). These are people that parents should want teaching their kids. But, yet, these people have already decided to get the heck out.

Of course job burn out is not reserved for the teaching profession alone. Statistics on the overall number of workers experiencing job burn out in the United States range from 26 to 50 percent. Prior to my current teaching job, I had worked in a number of office environments, where dreading going to work each morning was just a matter of course for both myself and almost everyone I worked with. I worked in one office that was a mere five-mile drive from my apartment. Despite the improbability of getting into any kind of major trouble in that short distance, every day I would wantonly hope to have a car accident on my way to work. It’s not that I had a death wish; it’s just that I had a paid-leave wish. The idea of being able to sit in a hospital bed for a good two to four weeks watching daytime TV and eating pudding cups seemed better than a spa vacation… in fact, that was my idea of a spa vacation!

But there’s a difference between cubicle-job-burn out and save-the-world-job burn out. Don’t want to go into work to sit in a cubicle and stare numbly at a computer screen? Join the club! In fact, you can join the club. On Facebook alone there are twenty-five different “I Hate My Job” pages and three groups (including the very adamant “I Hate My Job!!!” that boasts 1,774 members).

But if you don’t want to go into work to enrich the young minds and souls of the next generation through the power of education? Well, then, why don’t you kill a few puppies while you’re at it and call it a day. It may be okay to hate your desk job (or your waiting-on-tables job or your sales job or whatever job it is that you have that makes you want to get into a car accident every day), but it’s not okay to hate your teaching job.

And it’s not that I particularly hated my job, it’s just that I was starting to feel like my time could be spent doing better things elsewhere (and by “elsewhere,” I mean “on my couch”). I dreamed of using my daytime hours to finally write that book I’ve been meaning to write or learn more about photography…. or maybe just eat a lot of cookies. But I don’t exactly have a means to support my dreams of unemployment. I have no trust fund, no rich, benevolent uncle ready to kick the bucket and will me all his bucks and I doubt my collection of Oprah Magazines and knock-off handbags was going to catch me a pretty price on eBay.

Sometimes while wandering through the mall near my office, I would stare enviously at the young mothers pushing strollers through the stores and coffee shops and think maybe I could become a stay-at-home mom. Except without the whole “mom” thing. I am pretty sure I’d be an expert at the stay-at-home part, but I seriously doubt mom-hood is for me. I can hardly keep myself properly dressed and fed; I really shouldn’t be in charge of someone else’s well-being (especially some small, growing human being who requires the consumption of nutrients and vitamins and not just the consumption of, say, Reese’s cups and gin and tonics).

Besides, if I think teaching is hard, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t last a day as a mother. At least with teaching you can leave the kids at school and go home to a nice, quiet apartment. If you’re a mom and you try to do that, you might be charged with abandonment or, worse, the kids might come find you!

Besides, being a stay-at-home mom in Japan is pretty much out of the question. Being a mom in Japan requires the ability to not only feed and clothe your children but also the ability to shape Hello Kitty heads out of rice. Yikes!
Oh yeah, and there is the whole issue of trying to find a Japanese man willing to marry you. When you’re a nice, pretty Japanese woman who speaks Japanese and can make Hello Kitty rice balls this might not be so hard. When you’re a loud, irritable American woman whose knowledge of Japanese is limited to the pizza delivery menu and can only make rice balls in the shape of, umm, a ball (a big, misshapen, falling apart ball) this might be a bit more difficult.

So with unemployment and stay-at-home motherhood (without the mothering part) out of the question, what’s a girl to do but figure out how to cure this burn out thing and move on. Unfortunately, there’s not one sure-fire cure for teacher burn-out. Suggested cures include everything from getting professional therapy to reading websites full of smarmy, inspirational teacher quotes, including “Judge each day, not by the harvest, but by the seeds you plant” or “We must view young people not as empty bottles to be filled, but as candles to be lit” (which, admittedly, is a good quote, but maybe not the best suggestion for teachers experiencing extreme work frustration and irritability… as they may just take it into their heads to set those young people on fire as the quote suggests!).

As with most problems, the first step to curing work burn out is admitting that you have a problem, which hasn’t been as easy as it sounds. It’s hard to admit that a job you once jumped out of bed each morning to get to is now the job that’s making you consider jumping into oncoming traffic. It’s hard to admit that you’d much rather be sitting on your couch eating cookies and swilling gin and tonics than enriching young hearts and minds. You risk sounding like a jerk or a slacker or a serious alcoholic…. or like the 1,774 other whiners on the “I Hate My Job!!!” Facebook group page.

It’s been hard to admit, but at the same time it’s made me start to reevaluate what I’m looking for in my next teaching position. In fact, it’s made me reevaluate looking for a teaching position at all… well, at least for now. I’ve decided not to rush into my next job, but to take some time to look at the different options out there as well as the different countries out there. I’m also going to take some time to travel… and maybe write that book I’ve been meaning to write or do more with my photography…. or, maybe, just eat lots of cookies.