You can change NOW.

Don't "lock" yourself into doing something you hate!

I have a friend that became a teacher over the last few years. I say years because you don't just go to school and just suddenly start teaching classes when you graduate with your degree. Future teachers work as "student teachers" while they earn their degrees. It is like an unpaid internship: they learn to develop lesson plans and get into real classrooms early to implement them. My friend spent a lot of the last few years student teaching.

Now, finally, she is a teacher. She hates it.

Her students don't care. The administration ensures that there are slight, if any, consequences for bad behavior and failure to complete assignments. (For example: ANY assignment can be turned in before the end of the semester for a maximum grade deduction of 15 points.) She is frustrated. The same administration that forces her to prevent students from failing, removing the grade related consequences for failure to participate and turn in assignments, criticizes her for the poor performance of her students.

The worst part is that she started to dislike what she was doing while she was still student teaching. She thought, "you know what ... I don't like this, I might change my course of study." Why didn't she just do that? 

"You have come too far", people said. "Get through the rest of the schooling and it will be better when you start actually working. Well, that turned out to be false. She knew that she didn't like what she was doing. When she started making moves to change her path everyone told her not to, and she listened.

Yeah, I get it. Someone is a quarter way or half way through a course of study, and they have already paid to take those classes. If they start on a different course of study, they will be behind. That money they spent on those classes will be wasted. My question is, "behind what?" How are you behind? Adults taking another semester in college isn't like kids getting held back in elementary school. You don't lose points in life for finishing a year later.

So she didn't change programs. She finished. Now, she's miserable and she's wanting to quit teaching after a single year. If she goes back to school for something she actually wants to do, is that a waste too? Wouldn't she have been better off changing her course of study while she was still in school?

I guess what I'm saying is, it isn't too late to change the path you are on. Your life is not set in stone. You haven't sworn a blood-oath to be a doctor, teacher, or engineer. If you hate your life, fix it. Fix it early. Sometimes, if you put it off because you've already gone so far down the road you are on to turn back, you are really just delaying the inevitable. It will take effort and a little discomfort to change things for the better. Do not waste time being unhappy now just to have it be more costly later.

Start making the change you need to make.