Transcript + vocabulary list + exercise:
Transcript: Episode 18 (Part I)
[00:00:04.100] - Oliver (Host)
Welcome back to another episode of English and Beyond. If you're new here, this is an intermediate to advanced podcast for people who are learning English as a second language. If there's anything in the podcast that you find difficult to understand, then please know that there is a free transcript online available at www.morethanalanguage.com. So if you have any doubts about anything that you hear, go and have a look at that and it will be able to sort that out for you. I should also say now that you may be able to hear some background noise in today's episode. The reasons for this will become clear later when I get into the episode. But first, César, welcome back to the podcast.
[00:00:53.020] - César (Guest, briefly!)
Thank you very much, Oliver.
[00:00:54.450] - Oliver (Host)
It's been a while. No?
[00:00:55.740] - César (Guest, briefly!)
It's been a while. Different setting, different life.
[00:01:01.110] - Oliver (Host)
Different life.
[00:01:01.970] - César (Guest, briefly!)
Yeah.
[00:01:02.850] - Oliver (Host)
Yeah. But we'll get on to why exactly. But I had my mum on the podcast, and then I had my dad on the podcast, and then I failed to be consistent myself, and so - you know - now we're here with a week missed out, with a proper episode. And I'm afraid, César, you should sit back and make yourself comfortable.
[00:01:21.990] - César (Guest, briefly!)
Okay.
[00:01:22.780] - Oliver (Host)
Because it's going to be a while.
[00:01:23.960] - César (Guest, briefly!)
Okay.
[00:01:24.430] - Oliver (Host)
I've got a little speech to make.
[00:01:25.900] - César (Guest, briefly!)
No worries. I'm sure I will enjoy it, as the rest of the listeners.
[00:01:29.720] - Oliver (Host)
I'm sure. Okay, so, listener.
[00:01:34.740] - Oliver (Host)
I have a little announcement to make, but it's one of those funny things where it's extremely important to me and of absolutely no relevance or importance to anyone else. As you'll know, if you've listened to the previous episodes of this podcast, I've been working as a secondary school teacher for the past five years, teaching Latin and Ancient History, as well as a little Ancient Greek from time to time. Well, I've made a career change again, but as you'll see, it's one that has brought me full circle. It's brought me back to the beginning of my career. As we say in English, using the French expression, "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose" - the more things change, the more they stay the same, i.e. Nothing ever really changes. Well, a couple of things have changed in the last few weeks, and it explains why I failed to upload an episode last week for the first time. Firstly, I didn't start back at school in September.
[00:02:36.300] - Oliver (Host)
Instead, I quit my job. I'm no longer working in a secondary school in England, and part of the reason for that is that I'm no longer living in England at all. Instead, as of last week, I've moved to Spain. If you're learning Spanish, you can hear more about that in next week's episode of César and my podcast, Spanish for False Beginners. But this episode is about something slightly different. A German listener of both the Spanish and English podcasts asked me recently whether I have actually discussed my transition from banking lawyer to teacher in full. And I'm not totally sure that I have. I definitely haven't in this English podcast, but it seems like today would be a good time to do so since I've just made this big change of quitting my most recent job. So I'm going to share a little more with you about what brought me to this point, where I'm recording these weekly podcasts for you. I could say that it's been an epic adventure story of twists and turns, highs and lows, and ultimately finding fulfilment. But that makes it sound much more exciting than it has really been. That said, it is true to say that my teaching job in education brought me more job satisfaction and workplace happiness than I'd ever had previously.
[00:04:01.900] - Oliver (Host)
And I know that that makes me very lucky. This problem of a lack of workplace happiness is one that lots of us face, right? Listeners, how many of you are currently not particularly satisfied or happy at work? I guess I am a typical millennial because I must confess, most of the jobs I've had have been a bit rubbish, frankly. I felt quite negatively about them. And that's despite having had myself a lot of luck and some pretty interesting and prestigious, respected jobs. But as I said, teaching has definitely been the best job I've ever had. But in today's episode, I'm going to explain my career path and rate most of the jobs that I've had. I should warn you, if you don't already think that I am a pessimist and incredibly ungrateful, you probably will after this episode. I should also put into context that many of the poor decisions I've made in terms of my career were motivated by my very teenage belief, arguably a foolish one, that money was the most important thing in life. I certainly wasn't alone in this at school. I think partially, in fact, I wanted to be rich specifically because it's what all the other boys at my school wanted too.
[00:05:25.660] - Oliver (Host)
And it was pretty obvious for us all that the easiest way to win the respect of my peers, of the people of my same age, would be to be wealthy, to have a lot of money. And in fact, times have not changed. As a teacher in a British state school, I often told my students how depressing it was to hear them say exactly the same things that I used to. It's a cliché, but money doesn't make you happy, although it obviously does contribute. My mum used to say, I think quite sensibly, that although money won't make you happy, it will definitely make your misery more comfortable. And virtually no rich people are willing to give up all their wealth despite often claiming that they were actually happier when they were less wealthy before they had made their money. In any case, I am definitely not the person to take financial advice from. Every time I've changed career, I've taken a 50% pay cut. That is, my salary is halved with each new job, which demonstrates my complete lack of financial sense. So how did I get to this point of having been, until recently, a relatively underpaid but relatively happy teacher?
[00:06:40.830] - Oliver (Host)
Well, my career started, like many teenagers, with a weekend job in the world of retail. My first job was at a nationwide stationers and bookseller. A stationer is a shop where you can buy pens, paper, and other things for writing, and you can also often buy things like video games, movies, sweets, greeting cards, etc. I found that job really remarkably dull, really very boring. I later worked in retail again, very briefly, immediately after graduating from University, this time at a popular college-themed British clothing store. Think Hollister or Abercrombie, but incredibly British. Anyway, to be completely honest, I disliked both jobs. I have a lot of respect for people who are able to last the course in retail, that is, work for a long time in this industry. In both my retail jobs, I found the job quite tedious and repetitive, but I also found myself very easily stressed by the constant demands of trying to locate things for irate, angry, furious customers in always cluttered and disorganised stockrooms. In the stationers, I also remember many customers absentmindedly paying for expensive greeting cards - absentmindedly meaning that they did it without really concentrating on the price - then walking out of the shop and becoming horrified when they realised the cost of what they had bought.
[00:08:14.330] - Oliver (Host)
Immediately, they would turn on their heel, they would spin 180 degrees, and walk back into the shop to demand a refund, to demand that I give them their money back right now, often acting as if I personally had tried to fool or deceive them in some way. That said, I definitely prefer that whole experience to working in the clothes shop. Fashion, in general, is not for me. I don't have any dress sense or style, and I was certainly not cool in any way when I was young. I remember having to stand in the front of this shop for certain shifts and just welcoming people into the store in a very American style. We were supposed to stand at the front of the shop and smile broadly, that is to use a big smile showing all of our teeth, and welcome people in. It was bizarrely uncomfortable in a British setting, and most British customers just smiled awkwardly while trying to avoid eye contact, and you could totally tell that they were thinking, "Please don't talk to me". I also remember the uniform, which was an outfit made up of clothes sold in the shop. First, you had to pay for it, which seemed crazy to me, losing money from my salary to wear clothes I would prefer not to.
[00:09:33.530] - Oliver (Host)
You also had to buy a new uniform each season as the items sold in the shop changed. In the season that I worked there, this included skin-tight jeans that I found incredibly uncomfortable. They were too tight absolutely everywhere, like they were painted on. These jeans, unfortunately, also led to the only instance of homophobic abuse I've ever experienced in London. I remember walking down the street in North London barely able to even waddle along like a duck in these super tight jeans, and a man leaned out of his van to shout a slur at me, and I felt angry, I felt irate. They weren't even my clothes. I felt like shouting back at him, "You think I'm wearing this by choice?!" Whatever I was wearing, I didn't deserve to have someone shout something at me, but it was particularly annoying in this instance.
[00:10:24.580] - Oliver (Host)
Anyway, I was only in that job very briefly because another opportunity came up and I leapt at it. I saw a really interesting advert for a job working in the UK Parliament in Westminster. This job was an entry-level research position, but it paid better than retail and it was infinitely more exciting.
[00:10:44.460] - Oliver (Host)
Essentially, I worked for the government in power at the time, helping the Members of Parliament (MPs) engage with their constituents, the people they represented. If you write to your MP, it's obviously incredibly unlikely that they will actually read and respond to your letter themselves. It does happen, but obviously, they're very busy people, and so they need to delegate this job to assign it to someone else more junior. In my office, part of the job was researching the issues, the problems, that the constituents raised, and drafting responses on behalf of the relevant MP. Drafting simply means the process of trying to write something. You can draft a text message on your phone, or you draft a 200-page financial agreement. It's the same verb, and it just implies that it's not yet the final product. Similarly, when MPs stand up in Parliament to ask questions, those questions will often have been researched and drafted by people like me. I've always been interested in politics, so this was a great job for me, and I got to draft a letter on behalf of the Prime Minister at the time, which was genuinely really cool for me. Another great advantage of the is that I could take anyone into Parliament with me without them having to queue up or pay, etc, and we could go virtually anywhere in the building.
[00:12:10.280] - Oliver (Host)
There are various restaurants and bars with incredible views in the Parliamentary complex, Although I think a series of scandals involving drunk and inappropriate MPs have seen these numbers reduced. But anyway, I was single and in my mid-twenties, and lots of the people I was dating wanted to go on a date in the Houses of Parliament, and I was very happy to oblige. People would often ask me if I had to deal with any drunken advances, any attempted seductions from Members of Parliament, and I'm pleased to say that I did not. Anyway, my job in Parliament was just a part-time job three days a week. I was doing the job while studying at law school. My studies only required me to be physically in the university two days a week. I had decided to pursue a career law during my last year of university, and so that was my main focus, and I never considered at that point trying to pursue a long-term career in politics, although it is definitely something I am hugely interested in as a topic, not as a job.
[00:13:16.550] - Oliver (Host)
Being a lawyer certainly had its own sets of challenges and rewards. On one hand, I loved the drafting process. Drafting legal documents was something I found really intellectually stimulating and enjoyable. I worked in three different offices as a lawyer: London, Frankfurt, and Milan. In the last two offices, the teams were tiny, and so I was given quite complex drafting tasks that I wouldn't have been entrusted with, that I wouldn't have been given responsibility for, in the huge London office, where there would have been many more qualified senior associates to do the work. Drafting was the favourite part of the job for me. I liked just being left alone for days at a time trusted to deliver high-quality first draft. It was challenging to be given a set of instructions by the client and then to work it into a long high-value contract. There were many variables and little bits of information you had to fit into the drafting. It was like a big logic puzzle, and I really enjoyed it. However, the job also required frequent client calls, which I completely dreaded, that I really didn't look forward to. I found these interactions incredibly stressful, and I often felt out of my depth, that is, like I didn't know what I was talking about, having to project confidence and knowledge that I usually didn't feel as a junior lawyer at the beginning of my career.
[00:14:46.530] - Oliver (Host)
My boss was also quite an unusual person. I think I mentioned in the conversational part of my Horrible Bosses episode, episode number 4, that I think consistency is a very important part of managing people. His moods would wildly swing from one hour to another. One hour, he would treat me as employee of the year, saying that all the work I did was wonderful and that he was so grateful to have found me. The very next hour, he would complain that we were working far too slowly as a team, and that everything was terrible, and that we needed to improve hugely to survive. I think he was going through a difficult time in his life, frankly, and I think it's tough not to take that out on your employees sometimes. And I definitely didn't suffer the worst of it, but it was still a bit tough to cope with these frequent changes in mood. For me, the negatives of the job quickly outweighed the positives. That is, the negative seemed bigger and more significant than the positive things. After a few years of being a lawyer, I met César in Spain while I was on an extended holiday in Valencia, trying to brush up on, trying to improve my Spanish.
[00:15:56.900] - Oliver (Host)
We began to have a long distance relationship, and after a year of that, we decided to try to move to the same country. César, speaking not a word of German, was understandably reluctant to move to Frankfurt. He had previously been living in London, and he had had to leave London for family reasons earlier in the year that I met him, so he was actually really eager to return there, and I wasn't opposed to the idea myself. I wasn't against the idea, so we decided to move to London together. I wasn't particularly happy being a lawyer, so I decided to use this opportunity of moving back to London to start fresh, to start anew. Eventually, I made a significant career shift and became a teacher. Teaching wasn't a totally new experience for me. While I have discussed most of my previous jobs in quite a lot of detail, there's one aspect I haven't mentioned. During my teenage years, and then during my first jobs in London, and even during my legal education, I was working as a tutor as well, particularly in languages. A tutor is a private teacher who often works one-on-one with a particular client, often a young student.
[00:17:13.060] - Oliver (Host)
I spent many hours commuting all around London, teaching children and occasionally adults, with a focus on Latin and English. At this stage, I had absolutely no desire to be a teacher in a school properly. It sounds ridiculous, but this would have felt almost like a failure. When I chose to study Latin at university, some of my classmates said it was a stupid choice and that I could only end up a Latin teacher and that I would never have a highly paid job like they would get with their economics degrees. I was certain that they were wrong, and they were wrong: I did get that highly paid job in finance, but with experience, I also realised how little it mattered to me that I have that job. But it did take me a few years to get over my own ego and realised that being a Latin teacher wasn't some sort of failure. It was, in fact, the best job I have ever had by far. As a teacher, I have loved talking to my students and engaging with them on a daily basis. We can say in English that this statement sounds really cheesy, that is, exaggerated and sentimental.
[00:18:21.820] - Oliver (Host)
But there really is something incredibly rewarding about sharing knowledge with other people. I love learning and I love teaching. It's really quite rewarding when you are putting a lot of effort into getting someone to learn something and then seeing the light of understanding in their eyes when they finally get it. In addition, in teaching, in languages, I know my topics inside out, and I don't have to make things up on the spot. I feel well-prepared and confident, which is the absolute opposite of how I used to feel as a junior lawyer. Teaching has also brought me a sense of fulfilment that I never experienced in my previous jobs. Effectively, it's a profession that aligns with my skills and passions, and I have genuinely looked forward to going to work every day. So why have I decided to leave teaching in a school? Well, of course, no job is perfect. One of the biggest downsides of teaching, especially compared to law, is the salary. The pay in education is significantly lower, which was a tough pill to swallow at first. However, I've come to realise that for me, money isn't everything.
[00:19:38.000] - Oliver (Host)
My happiness and well-being are more important, and the joy I get from teaching far outweighs the financial benefits I had as a lawyer. As a student, I would never have believed that, but now I truly understand the value of doing what you love. I guess that I've been lucky to have actually had a very well-paying job in law. If I hadn't, I might always have wondered, what if? But now I know from my own experience that a good salary isn't enough for me. For lots of people I know, they're lucky enough to enjoy their jobs in law or in other industries, which is fantastic. This means that they get to be happy at work and they get paid a lot for it. But that wasn't the case for me. The other major drawback of working and teaching has been the admin. Quite often, you have to do in-job training or admin work where you feel like you spent hours filling out forms and writing up reports and then no one ever looks at it again. It's quite draining and demoralising to do this, and it definitely chipped away at it, it gradually lowered, my motivation.
[00:20:41.040] - Oliver (Host)
I also feel that teachers become responsible for far too much in society now. Not only are they teaching the subjects they've been trained for, but they're also effectively working as therapists and social workers for the children. The government, in my opinion, expects teachers to fix the problems the neglectful parents create, and I don't think that's reasonable or realistic. Perhaps that's a topic for another episode, however.
[00:21:06.800] - Oliver (Host)
In any case, the biggest reason I've left teaching in a school is because of the opportunity to go to Spain. César has spent most of his adult life in the UK, and I think it's fair that after six years living in London together, that we give Spain a try. He didn't have to persuade me. In fact, I think I was doing most of the persuading. I'm very excited to be in and to work full-time on this English language project with César, which means I get to combine my love of Spain and also my love of teaching. So, my career journey has been far from straightforward. It's certainly very different from the traditional career paths of the past, where someone would stay in the same company for their entire career.
[00:21:51.710] - Oliver (Host)
I haven't even stayed in the same industry. However, my own journey has led me to a place where I feel genuinely pretty happy and fulfilled. I really enjoy what I'm doing at the moment. There were times when I was working in law where I felt like there was absolutely no way I could possibly do this for the next 40 years. I don't know, listener, if you're in a similar position. I'd love to know, so please do email me about it. I was lucky with my career, though, because I don't have children or big financial burdens, which meant that I could leave law. Not everyone has the freedom to leave a job they dislike. But if you do have that option and you're currently unhappy, I would definitely recommend giving something else a go. If you're feeling stuck or unfulfilled in your career, try a new path. You never know where it might lead you. Hopefully, it won't lead you into poverty...
[00:22:43.980] - Oliver (Host)
So, listener, If you've managed to make it to the end of this extremely long spiel, this extremely long speech, I'm afraid you're going to have to wait a little bit longer for César to return, because this has been so long - against my expectations - that I think I'm going to have to split it into two. So the chat will be uploaded on Sunday. So I never thought that I would create a cliffhanger kind of situation, a cliffhanger being at the end of an episode of a TV show where there's some mystery and music and you are excited to watch the next episode. But that's where we find ourselves, with a cliffhanger.
[00:23:24.240] - César (Guest, briefly!)
Our discussion about this topic is the cliffhanger?
[00:23:27.410] - Oliver (Host)
Yeah.
[00:23:27.650] - Oliver (Host)
Okay.
[00:23:28.400] - Oliver (Host)
Not a very good one. But, well, I mean, the people love you, Césarm, so I'm sure that they will-
[00:23:36.710] - César (Guest, briefly!)
They love you, too.
[00:23:38.940] - Oliver (Host)
I'm sure that they'll stick around for a Sunday. So thank you, listener, for listening. Please remember to rate the podcast, give me five stars, and also share it with your friends. And since I've done a little shout out, shout out to Cristina as well for sharing the podcast with virtually everyone in Spain.
[00:23:58.560] - César (Guest, briefly!)
Thank you, Cristina. We love you.
[00:24:01.400] - Oliver (Host)
Muchas gracias, Cristina.
[00:24:04.170] - César (Guest, briefly!)
Muchas gracias! See you on Sunday, then.
[00:24:05.220] - Oliver (Host)
See you on Sunday...
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