Dream-hopping
My first job after passing the board exams was teaching. I taught for a year at my college alma mater, and probably that would be the most worthwhile experience in my professional life. During my undergraduate years, I did imagine myself standing inside a classroom full of students, telling them a thing or two about engineering, making them laugh during lectures and giving them a hard time during exams.
Teaching is fun, but it is not for everybody. I can very well remember the mornings when I had to wake up very early, excited and looking forward to be with my students. But there were also those days when it was hard to get out of bed, because I was not yet that prepared with my lessons. I would get up anyway and, no matter how I felt, tried to get on with the day for 30-50 reasons—the students I was responsible for.
Teaching is not just a work to do. It’s a role. In teaching, the boundary between working hours and non-working hours is not defined. A teacher’s role does not stop after 5 p.m., and it is not confined within the four corners of the classroom. Other than checking a gazillion of examination papers, I think I had the hardest time making sure that, in the presence of my students, in or outside the classroom, I always measured up to the highest standards of behavior teachers are expected to live by.
After a year, I came to the conclusion that my first job was a dream come true. To be sure, it had its downside, like having to stay up late to prepare lessons and getting my hands all tired and aching after checking countless test papers. But the thought that I was able to share myself with others, the attention that I was getting in and out of the classroom, and the monetary compensation more than made up for a wonderful year.
However, I left that dream job for another. It is not that I was not satisfied with teaching; I just wanted to pursue other dreams.
I am now a practicing electrical engineer, and I got hooked up with this crazy industry called construction. This new job is quite different, although it has its similarities with my first. I also deal with people (which I like), but this time they belong to a different breed. Before, I dealt with young people very eager to see the world; now, I am dealing with grown-ups who have seen more seasons than I have had. Before, I was the teacher with many students, now I am the student with many teachers. I may have earned a degree and a title to replace the “Miss” with “Engr.” before my name. But I have yet to learn a lot from my teachers and I am learning from them; learning some skills, techniques and strategies that no one can learn from any school other than the one called “University of Life.” Like in my first job, my work is not limited to a four-cornered room for eight hours a day, but the classroom is now a four-point-something-hectare construction site. Another similarity is that in my second job, I also have to deal with the male species of the humankind, except that those in school were tamer and the ones here are “extreme” in many ways that I can’t exactly describe.
Apparently, the two jobs have more differences than similarities. Students are more inclined to culture, literature, jazz, samba and classical stuff; the people in my new job consider these things weird. Where I was before, education is valued more than anything else; the industry I am now with values education as well but not as much as it values experience. I myself see that what I learned from school is nothing compared with the experience of the most uneducated worker on site. With our six days a week, eight hours a day plus OT schedule, this new job is definitely more stressful than the previous one where I was required to work only for five days a week. Furthermore, my current salary is only 60 percent of the basic pay I was earning before. In my first job, I only have to invest in semi-formal/semi-casual attire; right now, I need to buy clothes that are “construction-worthy.” I can’t wear my white button-down shirts because I get to be dirtied all the time from inspecting the buildings, or I’d get a lot of street sneers and cat calls; in fact at one time I cried out of frustration and anger (which I never ever did before). Many times, I wake up in the morning finding myself in the same clothes I wore the day before.
But unlike in teaching, I can now act like an ordinary girl after 5 p.m.—from being an engineer. But because of overtime assignments, I rarely have time to go out with friends or to sit down and read a book over coffee.
My life definitely has radically changed with this new job. I had to move out from my parents’ house and relocate to a place that’s near my work assignment. I had to uproot myself from the place that I have grown very familiar and comfortable with and leave people I have been with for so long.
Days still come with ups and downs. In getting out of bed, my only reason now is “I need to get things done.” My second job is not exactly comfortable for me. But nevertheless, this is a dream in the process of being realized. When I was in my first job, I did pray for a job like this: busy, challenging, dynamic, entailing interaction with a lot of people, and high-paying. I got everything that I prayed for, except for the high-paying part; but that will come in due time.
I have “hopped” from one dream job to another. The second dream job might not sound like too much of a dream job for many, but it is for me. It is a dream because I want to learn—to learn from experience, from people, from life and from the real world. Schooling only taught me and prepared me as much as it could for real life, but not enough for me to excel and do real good in the game called life. So, for now, I am resigned to the fact that I am broke, single and tired, but happy in the comforting thought that I am living a dream. And I will live and excel in it while waiting for the next dream to present itself.
Athena P. Lavega, 23, is an electrical engineer in a construction site somewhere along the West Service Road in Sucat, Parañaque.
