I don’t know about you, but I have a lot of close friends and family members who are teachers in various levels of academia from pre-k into the university, and the one binding characteristic between them all is they love to complain about how hard their jobs are.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Teaching is tough. If you don’t think it is, you’re a dumb stupid idiot. Think about it. We can barely stand spending six minutes alone with our own horrible smelly children. Teachers, on the other hand, have to spend EVERY DAY with dozens of children that don’t even belong to them. If you think that sounds like hell on earth, you’re probably right. I think we can all agree, teaching is a challenging profession. And everybody knows it is a challenging profession. In fact, nobody is challenging the fact that teaching is challenging. So teachers, for the love of the All-Father, you need to please stop telling us how tough your jobs are. We get it. We really do. The kids are terrible, the parents are worse, the pay sucks, the hours are endless, the curriculum is asinine, you don’t get the respect you deserve, blah ditty blah dee blah. Here’s the thing about teaching, teachers. You chose it. It didn’t sneak up on you. Nobody gets tricked into becoming a teacher. They don’t make just anybody a teacher after all. To teach, you first need a highly specialized education. Those aren’t obtained by mistake.

Nobody goes to college to be an engineer, or a pharmacist, or for easy access to excellent drugs (all liberal arts majors), and then accidently applies for, gets into, and completes an education program.That endeavor requires a series of conscious decisions and efforts on your part. The process to earn your masters degree, which as far as I know is almost universally required to obtain a professional teaching position, is arduous, expensive, and often includes hands on experience student teaching. This way, would-be teachers even get a trial run to decide if teaching is really right for them. Admit it. You could have walked away at any time. Hell, you can still walk away. If your job is so terrible, by all means, quit. If it’s not so terrible after all, then shush your mouth. The next time you feel the need to complain about your job, please try to remember, you’re not some sainted martyr deserving of beatification. You’re a person, with a job. Granted, it is a valuable job. And a stressful job. But it is a stressful job YOU CHOSE.

You became a teacher because, for whatever reason, you want to teach. You think that molding a young mind is a rewarding, magical experience, or you’re a pedophile, or whatever your motivations were, it doesn’t really matter. Even knowing all of the challenges associated with the profession, you still made a deliberate decision to become a teacher. Honestly, when you complain about the job you chose specifically, it’s pretty damn hard for the rest of us jackoffs to listen to, because hey, we have stressful jobs too, and we didn’t even choose ours on purpose. We only took OUR jobs because all of our dreams were crushed by the time we were 23 years old, and we have bills to pay, and if we didn’t work somewhere, we’d die.

So teachers, please, show some compassion. The next time you want to complain about your job, think about the rest of us first.

The next time you want to complain about the cost of your education to become a teacher, please remember that you didn’t have to go to college. You could have gotten a job right out of high school. Or went to a trade school. Or the military. Or you could have gone to college, but chosen a shorter course of study. Or a course of study that pays more upon completion.

Also, regarding your pay, the next time you want to complain about your pay, please remember, there are plenty of people who make less money than you. While you’re at it, you might also want to remember that nobody, ever, in the history of your life said “if you want to get rich, you should become a teacher”. So….there’s that. Teaching, not so lucrative. Let’s face it, the money was probably not why you got into teaching.

You got into it for the kids right? So, the next time you want to complain about how shitty the kids can be, please remember that the rest of us have to deal with the one thing worse than kids, every day. Adults. Let me tell something to you. Adults are terrible people. You get to spend your days with miniature humans that like eating crayons and trying to hide their daytime boners. The rest of us have to spend our days with the assholes that will eventually corrupt the tiny people you deal with. You only have to see most adults for brief periods of time before or after school, if at all.

The next time you want to complain about your hours, please remember that you don’t have a monopoly on working late. The average actual school day is what, 7 hours long? While you undoubtably have hours of work a day beyond that period of time, doing all of the corrections, revisions, and preparations needed for a successful school year, you don’t necessarily need to be in the school building to do it. You can do this portion of your work naked, at home, while receiving blumpkin on the toilet if you wanted to. When the rest of us have to work late, which is pretty much always, we have to do it AT WORK. In clothes. Also, you get summer vacations off. YOU GET SUMMER VACATIONS OFF.

So teachers, please. We love you. We respect you. We understand, you have a hard job. But so do we. So nut up, shut your faces and keep teaching our kids shit they’ll never actually need in the real world. Or, quit and join the rest of us hacks in the real world. You’ll hate it, I promise.

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