Thankfully I wasn’t quite that bad. I did get through an engineering undergrad and have two master’s degrees. But I couldn’t make it through the long term unstructured task that was the dissertation when I tried the PhD. I’ve had a rocky career that’s gone back and forth between engineering and teaching. Hit burnout at seven different engineering jobs in periods from 1-24 months. I learned later in life I’ve been struggling with undiagnosed AuDHD my whole career.

The one thing I’ve found I’m really good at and can maintain long term? Teaching. I’ve taught extensively at the undergraduate level and done a lot of K12 tutoring. I had planned to go completely into proper academia, become a proper professor and everything, but hitting a wall on the PhD prevented that.

After the PhD attempt I gave engineering industry jobs one more try. I was able to parlay a 3.9 GPA in doctoral level engineering coursework into a sweet industry job after dropping out. I pulled an acrobatic trick and failed my way into success. I was hired at a high level engineering job making $125k per year, with the potential for far more in the near future. I hit burnout after 9 months. That was last July. I’m currently working as a substitute teacher. (I believe you call them supply teachers in the UK?)

That was my last attempt at doing office jobs. I’m tired of doing this to myself.

But life is fine. I’m married to a partner that doesn’t have the same AuDHD struggles I do. He’s also an engineer, so even with my career troubles we’re. We’re both pretty frugal people and are wise with how we save and invest. I’m just lucky enough that I was able to hold things together long enough, that I could get far enough in schooling, that I workable living even with shaky employment. And we keep our expenses below what we can afford on just his salary. I’m not making a ton of money right now, not at least until I go through a proper teacher certification program. Right now we basically live off his salary, and my work is more about us reaching our savings and retirement goals.

Right now, I’m actually working on a mid-career transition into K12 teaching. Teaching is the one job I’ve ever found where I don’t hit burnout. I suppose in a way, it’s just surrendering to fate. The school environment has always just worked well for me. At some point you just need to lean in to what works.

It feels like I’ve come full circle. I have never exceeded my peers more than my high time in high school academics. And now? Twenty years after graduating high school, I’ve decided to just surrender to fate and become a high school teacher. This is apparently what the universe wants me to do, so that is what I will do.

Teaching just works with me the way nothing else does. Working with academic concepts but with the stakes being real human lives? The instant feedback you get from your work when you can see the look on a kid’s face whether he understands what you’re teaching him or not. The unique combination of a regular structure, well defined work scope, and opportunity for creative expression? It just all works with my brain in the way almost nothing else does.