Like the teacher in Alaska, I also had a very stressful job managing design and production for a million $ or so worth of publications for a nonprofit. Loads of tight deadlines, creativity on demand, managing other people, press or advertiser problem emergencies: the whole nine yards. And yet, of all the life-adjustments I had to make to come to MTC, the one I found the most difficult was exactly as she says: Not having a shred of autonomy in my job. Even the year I took “off” between career and Mississippi when I unloaded retail freight on a dock at 4 a.m. allowed me to have basic human needs.

Another thing that struck me (and I think I might have blogged it at some point) is that we, as teachers, are both isolated from and inundated by humanity. Some days I am so lonely for the social aspects of a “normal” workplace but then when I get home I don’t want to be touched or spoken to.

And of course, all of these traits are made that much worse by the particulars of teaching in critical needs schools. Other (suburban or upper-class private) career teachers I know are surprised that I don’t get even a short lunch break, not to mention the dearth of a real peer group as colleagues.

I taught full days as a substitute frequently during that year (and for a month or so when I got back from the Peace Corps), and know how draining a full day’s teaching can feel. The difference for me, of course, was that no class had more than twenty students, and the whole context of the private school where I taught was set up to be supportive of its teachers and students. That year I wished more than anything that I just had a full-time job teaching, which was vastly more fulfilling than the comically impossible job of working with the at-risk kids.

All this is to say that the terribleness of the teacher’s particular train seems partially due to some well known, traditional complaints: there are just too many kids and not enough support. And there need to be fewer kids and more support in proportion to how challenged the particular kids are. Career teachers at the school where I taught were not terribly well paid, but they were given an essentially manageable task with significant personal rewards.

As to the trades, I’m assuming you’ve heard of (or even read) Shop Class as Soulcraft, a book written by a disenchanted academic who became a motorcycle mechanic. It talks about the immense role of independence and exercising of personal judgment in one’s personal happiness, something that is present to significant degrees in many jobs that are not esteemed terribly highly in our culture, and the terrible dehumanizing present in many of the “knowledge worker” jobs that are supposed to be so fantastic.

Though my tools are almost all on a computer, I’m a tradesman myself, and I can honestly say that not a day goes by that I’m not struck by what a good situation it is. Using tools to solve problems and build stuff.

But still, I was usually the only one in a quiet room, or sometimes one of two in the room, each of us doing our own thing. If I wanted just to sit and catch my breath for a minute, I could. Sometimes my partner would step outside for a cigarette break, or I would stand at a window or balcony and stare out and listen to the strange quiet, or the distant construction noises. If someone had to pee, he just peed. There were consequences for moving too slowly, but, like the excerpt suggests, there were not thirty people in the room making demands, requiring impossibly individualized attention, a few of them (one hopes it’s only a few) actively working to thwart your efforts. I was struck when I began teaching by how much of a performance it is, the teacher like an actor on a stage; and it is one that lasts all day, with infrequent breaks (or sometimes none), with at least a captive and easily bored audience, often an openly hostile one.

Though it may sound silly, I have worked eight-hour days racing the clock—and in fact digging holes and pulling heavy cable (literally)—and I never went home as psychically drained or to bed as exhausted as I regularly do as a teacher. My present teaching situation is vastly better than some of my former ones (and even some of my former ones vastly better than some of my first ones). Still, there are days when I fantasize about installing toilets or digging holes.

Now, to be fair, there are many, many jobs in this country that don’t offer the large amount of freedom and self-determination that the majority of office jobs do. Garbage collectors, receptionists, dentists, and lots of other people are bound to schedules, running to keep up with trains in a manner similar to teachers.

I can’t deny the incredible luxury of the American office job. It’s not a luxury that (usually) involves laziness, but it does involve a tremendous amount of autonomy.