Sunday Nights

I used to be a High School physics teacher and so people often ask me why I left teaching and to become a programmer. You'll get a different answer from me every day you ask that question, but today's answer is Sunday nights.

When you find yourself picking fights with your wife, kicking the cat, and generally needing a few drinks every Sunday night it's because you know there's a week of pain coming. This pain may or may not materialize but there's a fair percentage that it will. Once, when I was a teacher, I had a 6'3'' football player in my class who would sometimes take to getting up and screaming at me. One time, after an altercation about talking in class had turned into a huge blow up, he pushed past me on his way out of the room. Now getting knocked aside by someone who could probably kill me in a fight wasn't a daily occurrence in teaching, but that's not the point. The point is that after that day it was always a possibility in my mind. There were other altercations in my 7 years of teaching and each added a little more weight to my Sunday nights. Toward the end of my time as a teacher the mass was unbearable. My job was making my non-job time painful so I had to leave.

Angry Sunday nights mean your job is beginning to smell.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Very well said! The bad thing is that it takes many of us way too long to recognize that we're in the wrong job and damage relationships with the people we love most. In my current job programming in ruby on rails I can't wait to get to work on Monday.

I don't know how teachers do what they do. I know that I wouldn't do well teaching in classes where the students weren't interested in learning.
September 29, 2008 at 11:19 AM
Miles said…
That's so true!!!
September 30, 2008 at 8:29 AM
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