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Discussion topic: Is it more stressful/challenging/hazardous-to-one's-health to (a) biglaw; or (b) teach middle school math/english?

Very interested in this. I taught for several years, including a two-year stint with TFA. I'm currently a 1L, and while law school is definitely tough, my years teaching were more difficult, at least so far.

Is this a joke?

What is harder? Hopscotch or the Bhutan Death March

1L is a vacation compared to teaching. It's not close.

People, read the hypo. Law school =\= biglaw. Of course law school is easier than teaching.

Desert Fox wrote:Is this a joke?

What is harder? Hopscotch or the Bhutan Death March

Did you actually teach?

kcdc1 wrote:

Desert Fox wrote:Is this a joke?

What is harder? Hopscotch or the Bhutan Death March

Did you actually teach?

No but I know the retards who do.

DF: FWIW, my teaching experience was 70 hr/week in a constant wheel-of-crisis. I doubt that this decision is as clear-cut as you think.

Also, the fact lazy teachers exist does not mean that they're doing a halfway decent job or that they'd have any job security in a modern system. We're talking about people that go TFA to BigLaw - not your 7th grade English teacher in 1997.

kcdc1 wrote:DF: FWIW, my teaching experience was 70 hr/week in a constant wheel-of-crisis. I doubt that this decision is as clear-cut as you think.

If you turned teaching kids 9 months a year with 6.5 hours of class time into a 70 hour/week wheel of crisis, big law will destroy you.

Desert Fox wrote:

kcdc1 wrote:DF: FWIW, my teaching experience was 70 hr/week in a constant wheel-of-crisis. I doubt that this decision is as clear-cut as you think.

If you turned teaching kids 9 months a year with 6.5 hours of class time into a 70 hour/week wheel of crisis, big law will destroy you.

You clearly know nothing about teaching and teachers, especially those who enter the profession as unqualified and untrained as those in TFA.

Desert Fox wrote:

kcdc1 wrote:DF: FWIW, my teaching experience was 70 hr/week in a constant wheel-of-crisis. I doubt that this decision is as clear-cut as you think.

If you turned teaching kids 9 months a year with 6.5 hours of class time into a 70 hour/week wheel of crisis, big law will destroy you.

Imagine you have to deliver a 6.5 hour presentation. How long would it take you to prepare for said presentation? Now imagine that in addition, you have to devise and implement a system to measure what each participant learned from each 1 hour interval. Now imagine that you need to simulatenously deliver three different presentations and metrics because the participants come into the presentation at completely different levels.

This is the baseline. If you're only doing these things, you're doing a crappy job.

Have done both. They're very different. If you're not totally drained by being "on" you're probably better off teaching. If you are, you'll probably find them to be similarly bad. My worst weeks at a firm are WAY worse than my worst weeks teaching, but my best weeks at a firm are significantly better than my best weeks teaching. Overall I would say firm life is more soul-sucking/miserable/unsustainable emotionally.

skri65 wrote:

Desert Fox wrote:

kcdc1 wrote:DF: FWIW, my teaching experience was 70 hr/week in a constant wheel-of-crisis. I doubt that this decision is as clear-cut as you think.

If you turned teaching kids 9 months a year with 6.5 hours of class time into a 70 hour/week wheel of crisis, big law will destroy you.

You clearly know nothing about teaching and teachers, especially those who enter the profession as unqualified and untrained as those in TFA.

"You don't understand how hard this job that someone with literally no qualifications or training can do!"

Lets ask SBL. He did both.

kcdc1 wrote:Imagine you have to deliver a 6.5 hour presentation. How long would it take you to prepare for said presentation?

If it's to 8 year-olds? Roughly nine minutes. How much time do you need to prepare to teach basic multiplication? I spent a whopping half-hour preparing for my last contested three-hour hearing in front of a crowded courtroom, two opposing parties, five attorneys, an ornery judge, and a client who is paying me a lot of money to look good. The stakes were much higher, and my "on" time much higher than a typical day in school, which involves shitting out pre-made assignments and having your little snotpiles trudge through busywork and ask stupid questions that you passively answer with a defeated look in your eyes.

I always hear these mythical stories about teachers having to work all the time, but all the teachers I know have a shit ton of time off and are out and about every weekend. Funny how that works. If you're good, you shouldn't need to spend a lot of time preparing. If you're not good, you're not in a position to complain how inherently demanding a job is.

I taught at the college level.

There just really is no comparison, for me, between teaching and big law. Big law will crush your soul if you feel that teaching is too taxing on you.
So you don't think I'm ignoring what people posted about teaching, I understand how much prep work goes into developing a course, lectures, labs (I taught a programming course so had to actually design labs for them to implement) and grading.

It just really doesn't compare to what you have to do in biglaw, or to the pace at which you need to do it. And the fact that you will work through all but perhaps 3 of your vacations in your first five years. Those three being honeymoon (maybe) and the bereavement leaves that you will take for the deaths of your parents.

kcdc1 wrote:

Desert Fox wrote:

kcdc1 wrote:DF: FWIW, my teaching experience was 70 hr/week in a constant wheel-of-crisis. I doubt that this decision is as clear-cut as you think.

If you turned teaching kids 9 months a year with 6.5 hours of class time into a 70 hour/week wheel of crisis, big law will destroy you.

Imagine you have to deliver a 6.5 hour presentation. How long would it take you to prepare for said presentation? Now imagine that in addition, you have to devise and implement a system to measure what each participant learned from each 1 hour interval. Now imagine that you need to simulatenously deliver three different presentations and metrics because the participants come into the presentation at completely different levels.

This is the baseline. If you're only doing these things, you're doing a crappy job.

Unless things massively changed since I was in school, you don't present for anywhere near that 6.5 hours. Students spend a ton of time on in class assignments and stuff like that. You also have access to prewritten lesson plans and curriculum.

You also have no supervision, no expectations, no consequences.

smallfirmassociate wrote:

kcdc1 wrote:Imagine you have to deliver a 6.5 hour presentation. How long would it take you to prepare for said presentation?

If it's to 8 year-olds? Roughly nine minutes. I spent a whopping half-hour preparing for my last contested three-hour hearing in front of a crowded courtroom, two opposing parties, five attorneys, an ornery judge, and a client who is paying me a lot of money to look good. (And yes, I won.)

I always hear these mythical stories about teachers having to work all the time, but all the teachers I know have a shit ton of time off and are out and about every weekend. Funny how that works.

I don't think a teacher has ever, in the history of the world, canceled dinner plans for work.

Hell teaches don't even have meetings after hours. If there are meetings, they cancel school that day. Just lol.

If big lawyers billed hours how teachers count theirs, we'd each bill 3500 a year.

I'm not saying teaching is/isn't better than biglaw, but don't go getting ridiculous. Lots of teachers work long hours. All of them? Probably not. But going home at the end of the day and grading things sucks. Again, more than biglaw? I have no idea. But you don't have to say "teaching is a cush job" to prove biglaw sucks. False dichotomy, bro. There are lots of different ways that crappy jobs can suck.

this is apples and oranges though. you gotta ask whether teaching sucks more than biglaw per dollar earned.

So far we've had exactly one contribution from a person who has actually done TFA or an equivalent thereof. In order to keep the discussion on topic, let's cut the uninformed speculation and teacher-trashing.

A. Nony Mouse wrote:I'm not saying teaching is/isn't better than biglaw, but don't go getting ridiculous. Lots of teachers work long hours. All of them? Probably not. But going home at the end of the day and grading things sucks. Again, more than biglaw? I have no idea. But you don't have to say "teaching is a cush job" to prove biglaw sucks. False dichotomy, bro. There are lots of different ways that crappy jobs can suck.

A lot of people with sweet gigs work a lot of hours. Doesn't mean they have to. Working long hours on your own accord isn't a stressful activity.

i would be very surprised if anyone a year into biglaw thought teaching was worse than biglaw in terms of physical and emotional well-being or hours

if they're peers of each other, don't TFAers basically run from TFA to law school to get a break from the hell that was TFA

A. Nony Mouse wrote:I'm not saying teaching is/isn't better than biglaw, but don't go getting ridiculous. Lots of teachers work long hours. All of them? Probably not. But going home at the end of the day and grading things sucks. Again, more than biglaw? I have no idea. But you don't have to say "teaching is a cush job" to prove biglaw sucks. False dichotomy, bro. There are lots of different ways that crappy jobs can suck.

I'm willing to believe teaching sucks, but I am not willing to believe it is because its an objectively hard job with long hours. I'm sure dealing with rotten ass kids is a pretty bad. And I can see how people who feel stressed out when presenting would hate it.

I'm sure there are people who sit around and spend 70 hours on their teaching job. But those people will spend 100 hours in big law. There are people like that who are perfectionists, slow, and overworkers. But I'm sure 30 hours of that is spent netflixing while slowly grading stupid worksheets.

skri65 wrote:

Desert Fox wrote:

kcdc1 wrote:DF: FWIW, my teaching experience was 70 hr/week in a constant wheel-of-crisis. I doubt that this decision is as clear-cut as you think.

If you turned teaching kids 9 months a year with 6.5 hours of class time into a 70 hour/week wheel of crisis, big law will destroy you.

You clearly know nothing about teaching and teachers, especially those who enter the profession as unqualified and untrained as those in TFA.

Yep. The OP could be better stated w/ something like:

Discussion topic: Is it more stressful/challenging/hazardous-to-one's-health to (a) biglaw; or (b) with no pedagogical experience or education, teach middle school math/english to typically disadvantaged students who have typically been taught by people with no pedagogical experience or education?