I Can’t Do This Any More
…I’m Just Burning Out.
Midway through Term 3 of 2022, I did something I have never done before as a teacher. I looked at the class I was teaching, and then at the class I would be teaching in 2023 and thought “I don’t want to do this anymore”.
Now, that might seem mild, but it was the first time in fifteen years of being involved in education that it had happened. No matter how tough the class, and how stressful the year had been — I was always sure that getting to the summer, refreshing and recharging, and taking on board some new ideas would see me through whatever lay ahead. And here I was, not 75% of the year gone, and I realised I simply did not have what it took to do it for a sixteenth year.
I was burned out, and I didn’t realise how burned out I was until I went to my GP, asked for eight weeks of medical leave and some anti-depressants, and handed in my resignation. It wasn’t just that I couldn’t do 2023, I couldn’t continue in 2022. I hadn’t been sleeping properly for months, I got the shakes sometimes, and my solution to any problem was just to put a few more hours of work in, because surely all I needed to do was work a bit harder and things would come right, things would be OK, everything would be fine. Except it wasn’t. I was in a real mess.
