Is there anything out there that can make you question yourself quite like looking for a job?

I’m not exactly sure what I want to do with myself come this summer. I was convinced that I wanted to leave the teaching profession, and I’m still leaning quite heavily in that direction, but what else can I even do? As a classroom teacher for the last twelve years, I think I have certain skills. I can make rapid decisions, have people skills, management capabilities, can multitask, am deadline oriented, and a million other things. But on paper? I don’t look so hot. Can I work with confidential information? Hell, yeah! I’ve worked on IEPs, ALPs, talked to general medical doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, police officers, social workers, divorced parents, siblings, etc. Can I communicate with others? Again with the hell yeah. Ive had to run conferences, send home newsletters, emails, phone calls, and manage my own classroom web site for almost my entire career. Still, all it looks like I can do on my resume is be a teacher.

Where does that leave me? I have no idea. I really want to work with grown ups this time around, that much I know. Incidentally, Husband says I can’t be almost forty and say “grown ups”, but I do. It’s not because I work with kids; it’s because I live in my own head and I don’t know if I am one of those or not. I really feel like I can be an excellent manager of others, representative to a company, organizer of someone’s schedule, but who out there will take a chance on me?

So, as I sit here and look at Daughter’s Christmas treasures wondering how I am going to move all of this stuff, I am becoming enveloped by a shrine of self doubt. Back to the resume drawing board…