Pilot 2022

[Source: South African Weather Services]

Teaching is hard. Unless you can continuously tap into that intrinsic passion that gave you the idea in the first place, you will be miserable. And then teaching becomes just arduous. Teaching is, and always will be, my second love.

Aware that covid-19 completely changed the educator/student interface, I have been struggling with making the decision to leave the teaching profession. Going into my career, I had dreams of changing the world - one kid at a time. While trying to be as significant in my learners lives as possible, the responsibilities of deadlines, curriculum completion, leaving paper trails, communication with stakeholders, toils of management took away most of my time and my focus shifted to doing what I needed to in order to keep the bosses happy and keep my job. My kids weren’t the reason I was hating my job and getting no sense of fulfilment. In fact, my kids are the reason I kept staying, year after year.

Eventually, something’s gotta give. I was not living the message I kept preaching to my students. Fear of not finding work or income to support my family, fear of not securing funds to proceed with my studies and fear of wasting time has kept me from pursuing my first love - flying.

While I still have not secured employment or funding for my studies, I am excited - even if now and then I have mild anxiety about it.

I have just under two months left with my students until my contract comes to a close. My students are aware of my endeavors and it has motivated many of them to step up their own plans. After 8 years of being in the classroom, the best thing I ever did for my students was resign in pursuit of my dreams. It’s shown them that one should never settle for second best, we should always find the courage to pursue our dreams boldly and that it’s brave to be afraid and keep going anyway.

At 31 years old, going into 2021 without employment for the first time in 14 years, I decided now is as good a time to follow my dream of becoming a pilot.