There was a small part of me that thought this would be easy: flipping my life entirely upside down, abandoning public education for a cushy, work-from-home tech job. I spent most of my planning periods this year daydreaming of writing long lines of code into the night with giant over-the-ear headphones drowning out my cares. In my mind, I was Vince Vaughn or Owen Wilson – a little old, a little tired, but ready to reinvent myself amongst the youngsters that call themselves software engineers. Gone will be the days of open-mouth coughs directly into my eyeballs and the perpetual wet shoelaces to tie. I'm trading in my apples for apps. My pencils for CodePen. I was about to take the tech world by storm. That is, before I got bested and humbled by HTML syntax and semantics.

There is great irony in my struggle with understanding how to read and write the most basic of markup languages – my current day job is to teach struggling readers how to crack the code of the English language by studying phonics patterns and applying that knowledge to texts in order to remediate their reading deficiencies. Translation: I teach struggling readers how to do the same thing I'm attempting: to read and write a language they want desperately to understand, but cannot easily grasp. The master has become the student.

When I joined 100devs, I thought coding would be my escape to a world outside of education. I was hanging up my hat with one foot out the door, ready to leave behind all the worries that come along with working inside a broken system. Imagine my surprise when a renewed sense of empathy and understanding sprouted within me as I sat alongside my students, practicing and reviewing those bits and pieces that come together to open a whole new world. It turns out that, while I am learning an entirely new career, I’m sharpening my soft skills of empathy, patience, kindness, and a love of life-long learning.

So while, particularly on tough days, I still drift off to my alternate universe where detailed, technical texts are as easily understandable as the latest Tiger Beat and my fingers overheat from sheer typing speed, I find myself more often relating my own struggles to my students'. I take more time to sit with them, in their frustration, and guide them through the trough of sorrow. And when I'm fatigued from the ever-growing demands and get a little too big in my britches, well, there's always a big helping of humble pie waiting for me in my next homework assignment (I'm looking at you, Shay Howe).