Teaching abroad is tempting, and if I could give advice to my younger self, I might encourage her to take that path. But for a variety of reasons, it’s not viable. First, don’t imagine my life as a total basket case. I’m not on the edge of homelessness or something. We’re very far from that. I’ve been fortunate enough that while I do burn out from positions, I’ve been able to bring in enough money to keep a roof over my head. It’s taken a lot of work, but I’ve been able to plan around career instability:
Long description of a life planning around AuDHD career instability:
spoiler
Even before I got the AuDHD diagnosis, I was already anticipating career instability due to me being trans. And entirely self-financing a transition in the years right out of college also did wonders to instill frugality in me.
One thing I got under control early was housing costs. I got on the property ladder early, as soon as I possibly could. Just to get out of renting, in 2012, I bought a three-bedroom townhouse in a rough neighborhood of a big city, in a weird development that was half built due to its builder going bankrupt in the housing collapse. But I bought a three bedroom townhouse for $92k. For just $3k down, I got out of renting. And that was probably one of the best decisions I ever made. It gave me stability. I lived in one bedroom and rented out the other two. That brought in enough to cover the modest mortgage. Eventually I moved in my boyfriend (now husband), and while I didn’t ask enough from him to cover the whole mortgage, it still brought a lot of stability.
Beyond that, I’ve always tried to work multiple jobs, to have multiple independent income streams. My usual side hustle is private tutoring. Back when I transitioned (2011-2014), insurance didn’t pay for anything. I had to fund about $60k in early 2010s dollars worth of medical care out of pocket. And tutoring paid for a lot of that. At my peak, I was essentially working two full time jobs, doing engineering work by day, and tutoring work at night.
And beyond that, I’ve tried to live as frugally as I can. When I was working on the PhD, we went down to a single-car household. I sold my car to fund the move across the country. My husband worked remote from home, and I just took a bike or bus to campus. Even today I get most of my furniture from Craigslist. And I’ve done many other things that most folks would consider unusual for someone of my education and background to do, in order to save money.
Stability and concurrent obligations that come with a long-term partner:
spoiler
And beyond even what I’ve personally done to try and maintain stability, I’m fortunate enough to have a strong backstop in my spouse. He’s fortunate enough to have a stable and well-paying career. And while he may also have some ADHD or AuDHD type tendencies, at least with him it’s never been bad enough to actually affect his career. He has a great job as a software engineer. Hell, we could survive just fine on his income. My desire to work is ultimately about a combination of a sense of personal worth and accomplishment, and a desire to be fair to him. (Plus as a backstop in case his industry is disrupted.) He didn’t sign up to be a caregiver. Sure, we swore “in sickness and in health.” If I ended up bedridden from some affliction, it would be perfectly fair for me to not work. But as long as I am still capable of performing some useful work, our partnership at the very least requires me to do whatever I can to contribute however I can to the household. He didn’t marry a dependent. We actually entered the marriage with equal net worth and fully merged our finances. We are a unit; what’s mine is yours, yours is mine. That gives me incredible safety and security, but it also means I have obligations to my partner. I’ll never earn as much as he does, and we’re both fine with that. It’s just not fair to him for me to be sitting around doing nothing all day when there are still rewarding types of work I can do.
Other factors making relocation difficult:
spoiler
So, my point being, I’m actually doing a lot better than you’re probably imagining. We’re not DINKS, but maybe 1.5INCS. No kids and 1.5 reliable incomes. Combine that with frugality on both our parts and good financial sense, and we’ve done quite well. We’re closer to early retirement than ending up on the street. For this last engineering job, we relocated cities. And that represented a huge investment. Finding a new home, moving an entire house’s full of stuff, getting the old place ready for sale, and outfitting the new home? It’s been an immense investment of time and money. My partner is the green thumb and we set up a great garden for him. I’m really into woodworking and built a dream workshop. We’ve put down roots here, and I’ve gotten heavily involved in trans activism in the area.
In short, we are really not looking to move again any time soon. I need to find a way to make a living where I am. (Or, how I’m really describing it to people, “earn a non-trivial portion of the household income.” That will bring fairness for my partner, provide a backstop in case his coding specialty is made obsolete, and provide me protection in case something god forbid where to happen to him.
That’s why I’m looking into K12 teaching. I can jump into substitute teaching right where I am, right as I am, right now. The only requirement to be a substitute teacher in my state is to have a bachelors degree and a clean criminal record. (Thankfully I’ve avoided any trouble with the law.) I’ve never worked in a K12 classroom. But I have taught extensively at the undergraduate level, and I have 20 years of experience tutoring K12 students. In the past, I had always focused on university teaching. I like that you get more academic freedom at the collegiate level, and dealing with things like parent-teacher conferences does sound like a PITA. And being trans in teaching is a bit riskier at the K12 than the university level. But at this point, I’m just tired of describing my teaching in the past tense. I want to get back into a classroom however I can.
Thankfully there is a pretty easy ramp. My local district always has needs for substitutes. You sign up for short 1-10 day jobs one at a time, but you could easily make a full-time job out of it. Doing that every day of the school year would only pay $50k without benefits, less than half of what I was making in industry, but that still is a non-trivial portion of our household income. And if I like that, they frequently hire people on for full-time but temporary positions (like covering for maternity leave.) And those positions pay actual proper teacher’s salaries with benefits. I think if I was a regular teacher in the district I would make $65k-75k starting (depending on how they count my prior work experience), plus great benefits. That’s not as good as the $125k I made at my last engineering job, but good enough. I’m not trying to get rich. I’m actually pretty modest in my wants and desires. I just want enough to provide peace and stability.
Hell, even while teaching undergrad, that’s all I really wanted. I was perfectly happy with the modest salary from being a full-time lecturer. I also totally get the idea that academia has too few constraints. Teaching is great - you have a clear body of work you must teach students, and then you can practice creativity within those constraints. But research? Trying to justify one particular research path over the infinite number of possibilities just breaks me.
In my head, the way I think of it is, I’m a performer that needs a stage to dance upon. I paradoxically need both freedom and structure. I need to be able to practice creative freedom, but I also need a structure to scaffold that. Restraints breed creativity.
Anyway, sorry this turned into such a brain dump. There’s obviously a lot going through my head right now. In short, while teaching abroad is very tempting (especially with how the US is with trans rights,) we really can’t relocate at this time. We just moved cities. And any international relocation would involve moving myself, a husband, two cats, and a big house full of stuff. And we already relocated across the country once for reasons of my career. Where we are is where we are. For good or for ill, this is where we make our stand.
Teaching abroad is tempting, and if I could give advice to my younger self, I might encourage her to take that path. But for a variety of reasons, it’s not viable. First, don’t imagine my life as a total basket case. I’m not on the edge of homelessness or something. We’re very far from that. I’ve been fortunate enough that while I do burn out from positions, I’ve been able to bring in enough money to keep a roof over my head. It’s taken a lot of work, but I’ve been able to plan around career instability:
Long description of a life planning around AuDHD career instability:
spoiler
Even before I got the AuDHD diagnosis, I was already anticipating career instability due to me being trans. And entirely self-financing a transition in the years right out of college also did wonders to instill frugality in me.
One thing I got under control early was housing costs. I got on the property ladder early, as soon as I possibly could. Just to get out of renting, in 2012, I bought a three-bedroom townhouse in a rough neighborhood of a big city, in a weird development that was half built due to its builder going bankrupt in the housing collapse. But I bought a three bedroom townhouse for $92k. For just $3k down, I got out of renting. And that was probably one of the best decisions I ever made. It gave me stability. I lived in one bedroom and rented out the other two. That brought in enough to cover the modest mortgage. Eventually I moved in my boyfriend (now husband), and while I didn’t ask enough from him to cover the whole mortgage, it still brought a lot of stability.
Beyond that, I’ve always tried to work multiple jobs, to have multiple independent income streams. My usual side hustle is private tutoring. Back when I transitioned (2011-2014), insurance didn’t pay for anything. I had to fund about $60k in early 2010s dollars worth of medical care out of pocket. And tutoring paid for a lot of that. At my peak, I was essentially working two full time jobs, doing engineering work by day, and tutoring work at night.
And beyond that, I’ve tried to live as frugally as I can. When I was working on the PhD, we went down to a single-car household. I sold my car to fund the move across the country. My husband worked remote from home, and I just took a bike or bus to campus. Even today I get most of my furniture from Craigslist. And I’ve done many other things that most folks would consider unusual for someone of my education and background to do, in order to save money.
Stability and concurrent obligations that come with a long-term partner:
spoiler
And beyond even what I’ve personally done to try and maintain stability, I’m fortunate enough to have a strong backstop in my spouse. He’s fortunate enough to have a stable and well-paying career. And while he may also have some ADHD or AuDHD type tendencies, at least with him it’s never been bad enough to actually affect his career. He has a great job as a software engineer. Hell, we could survive just fine on his income. My desire to work is ultimately about a combination of a sense of personal worth and accomplishment, and a desire to be fair to him. (Plus as a backstop in case his industry is disrupted.) He didn’t sign up to be a caregiver. Sure, we swore “in sickness and in health.” If I ended up bedridden from some affliction, it would be perfectly fair for me to not work. But as long as I am still capable of performing some useful work, our partnership at the very least requires me to do whatever I can to contribute however I can to the household. He didn’t marry a dependent. We actually entered the marriage with equal net worth and fully merged our finances. We are a unit; what’s mine is yours, yours is mine. That gives me incredible safety and security, but it also means I have obligations to my partner. I’ll never earn as much as he does, and we’re both fine with that. It’s just not fair to him for me to be sitting around doing nothing all day when there are still rewarding types of work I can do.
Other factors making relocation difficult:
spoiler
So, my point being, I’m actually doing a lot better than you’re probably imagining. We’re not DINKS, but maybe 1.5INCS. No kids and 1.5 reliable incomes. Combine that with frugality on both our parts and good financial sense, and we’ve done quite well. We’re closer to early retirement than ending up on the street. For this last engineering job, we relocated cities. And that represented a huge investment. Finding a new home, moving an entire house’s full of stuff, getting the old place ready for sale, and outfitting the new home? It’s been an immense investment of time and money. My partner is the green thumb and we set up a great garden for him. I’m really into woodworking and built a dream workshop. We’ve put down roots here, and I’ve gotten heavily involved in trans activism in the area.
In short, we are really not looking to move again any time soon. I need to find a way to make a living where I am. (Or, how I’m really describing it to people, “earn a non-trivial portion of the household income.” That will bring fairness for my partner, provide a backstop in case his coding specialty is made obsolete, and provide me protection in case something god forbid where to happen to him.
That’s why I’m looking into K12 teaching. I can jump into substitute teaching right where I am, right as I am, right now. The only requirement to be a substitute teacher in my state is to have a bachelors degree and a clean criminal record. (Thankfully I’ve avoided any trouble with the law.) I’ve never worked in a K12 classroom. But I have taught extensively at the undergraduate level, and I have 20 years of experience tutoring K12 students. In the past, I had always focused on university teaching. I like that you get more academic freedom at the collegiate level, and dealing with things like parent-teacher conferences does sound like a PITA. And being trans in teaching is a bit riskier at the K12 than the university level. But at this point, I’m just tired of describing my teaching in the past tense. I want to get back into a classroom however I can.
Thankfully there is a pretty easy ramp. My local district always has needs for substitutes. You sign up for short 1-10 day jobs one at a time, but you could easily make a full-time job out of it. Doing that every day of the school year would only pay $50k without benefits, less than half of what I was making in industry, but that still is a non-trivial portion of our household income. And if I like that, they frequently hire people on for full-time but temporary positions (like covering for maternity leave.) And those positions pay actual proper teacher’s salaries with benefits. I think if I was a regular teacher in the district I would make $65k-75k starting (depending on how they count my prior work experience), plus great benefits. That’s not as good as the $125k I made at my last engineering job, but good enough. I’m not trying to get rich. I’m actually pretty modest in my wants and desires. I just want enough to provide peace and stability.
Hell, even while teaching undergrad, that’s all I really wanted. I was perfectly happy with the modest salary from being a full-time lecturer. I also totally get the idea that academia has too few constraints. Teaching is great - you have a clear body of work you must teach students, and then you can practice creativity within those constraints. But research? Trying to justify one particular research path over the infinite number of possibilities just breaks me.
In my head, the way I think of it is, I’m a performer that needs a stage to dance upon. I paradoxically need both freedom and structure. I need to be able to practice creative freedom, but I also need a structure to scaffold that. Restraints breed creativity.
Anyway, sorry this turned into such a brain dump. There’s obviously a lot going through my head right now. In short, while teaching abroad is very tempting (especially with how the US is with trans rights,) we really can’t relocate at this time. We just moved cities. And any international relocation would involve moving myself, a husband, two cats, and a big house full of stuff. And we already relocated across the country once for reasons of my career. Where we are is where we are. For good or for ill, this is where we make our stand.