Weekly Lists #139: Things I Learned In My First Year Working

So. The exams are corrected. My students have their marks. I know I get to teach at the same school next year. Most of the courses are planned out. All of the manuals have been ordered. In other words: school’s out! And I survived my first year as an actual teacher! It’s been quite the ride, let me tell you that. Eventful, at times disheartening, and if nothing else: informative. The 5 things I learned in my first year working!

1. Sleep needs to be scheduled

I honestly don’t even know how I did this when I was in high school myself. I mean, Ihad a set hour to get up and get back to bed at that point, right? Somehow, though, throughout those six years of being in college, I might or might not have gotten slightly too used to having a weird schedule. I had days where I had no classes, others where I only started classes after lunch…
To go from that to attempting to actually get something like a 9 to 5 going? It was a rough wake up call. Especially because, you know, suddenly I didn’t have that chance to catch up on sleep at any given point throughout the week.
So yeah, suddenly I had to be my own parent, telling myself to go to bed at a decent hour. And giving myself a “stern talking to” if I wouldn’t listen to myself :p

2. Food is something you plan

This is something that, at least partially, comes from the same thing as the last one: rather than have random hours of free time, as I did as a student, now I was suddenly stuck at work for most of the day. Also, I decided even before I started work that, if at all possible, I wanted to bring my own lunch to school. And what’d’ya know – that actually means you have to plan ahead? And, like, make sure you have the right stuff sitting in your fridge.
(Spoiler: I often didn’t)
I’m not quite at the point where I have a full-blown mealplanning thing going on every week, but I am getting better. At the very least, it’s been over two months since I had to throw away food because I bought more than I actually needed and it had gone off. So that’s a win, right?

3. Frugal living can be fun

Especially when you have Jordan Page of Free Cheap or Fun to go off.
I’m 100% the type of person that needs to have at least some savings, so basically my first priority as soon as I got my first pay check was to figure out how much money I actually needed on a day-to-day basis, how much I could afford to spend, to save… How many books I could still buy :p
And, yeah, as it turns out? I actually quite like budgeting and all that stuff!

4. Taxes are awful

This is basically the polar opposite of the whole budgeting thing.
I hate this. Taxes are a gift straight from hell and the system needs to be sent back to get a decent washing up and some serious simplifying done.
Other things that I hate about adult life: administration (seriously, changing my address should not have been that hard!), ironing, hanging up the laundry and realising just how many times a week our appartement needs vacuuming. Seriously – I didn’t even know I had that much hair, let alone that I could lose it at this rate!

5. I love my job

Seriously, I’ve loved every minute of it. Even the minutes that had my head exploding from being in the same room as 40 18-year old boys for 4 hours. Even the ones where I didn’t know on Sunday night what I was supposed to be teaching the next morning. I loved those moments slightly less maybe? But I loved them none the less.
I’m so incredibly happy I’ve gotten to be a teacher, the job I proclaimed I wanted when I was just 6, for an entire year now. I’m even happier that I get to do it for at least another year – so here’s to that!
-Saar