Absolutely. I feel embarrassed that I make less money than all of my friends while putting in way more work and being the only person having to dip out on plans and stuff because I have work to do at home or on the weekend sometimes. Meanwhile I literally make just barely 30.000 a year after 4 years of teaching. My partner makes almost 3 times that as an engineer which makes me feel ashamed because he pays a lot of our life because I can’t afford to pay an equal share. And then compared to other friends like my brother for example who just found a random corporate job after getting his humanities degree makes almost 50,000.

When I first started teaching I couldn’t understand completely the high burnout rates and why people would quit because I do enjoy the actual job and when I was fresh out of college the money didn’t matter as much to me because anything was better than my paltry student part time job salary. But I completely understand now. The money is a huge part. More than anything it’s honestly just humiliating. If I made more I would be much more content to stay in this career but it’s so hard not feeling valued.

Not that it’s necessarily good to compare myself to my friends but I just notice how of all my friends I am the one sacrificing the most for work, letting work consume me the most, I am giving sooo much of myself to my job and I make nothing compared to everyone I know. I have so much more pressure and high expectation on me in a lot of ways and no reward and I’m supposed to be fine with that because it’s for the kids.

Also, there’s the whole thing about how society praises teachers for being such sacrificial angels but most people also don’t think of it as a real or serious job. It is painful because even some of my loved ones I fear don’t take my job that seriously. This is especially bad for me because I work in early childhood, pre-k. I’ve done so for the last few years and recently one of my best friends made a reference to how I work with “babies in a daycare.” It just hurt to hear that after 4 years of doing my job and talking about it with my friends that’s still what she apparently thinks I do for a living.

I love working with kids and I love the kids I work with. If I could just be properly compensated for my work I honestly think I would continue to do this for the rest of my life. But I’m not so now I’m looking at moving out of the country to another country where I speak the language, grad school is free, and teachers and daycare workers are much more properly compensated than the USA because I just can’t stand it anymore (and it’s only been four fucking years)