How my friend who was a private part-time Tuition teacher became a full time MOE teacher and lost his joy of teaching..

I have a friend who quit a good engineering job in a govt agency doing important defense related work (hope I'm vague enough to not sabo someone kena doxxed) to pursue teaching, at a 50% paycut.

He's finally had enough.

Background: dude taught private tuition at the side and found meaning in education when he saw the impact he was making in his students' lives. Decided to go full time teaching as he naively thought that tutoring and teaching are the same things.

His wife reached out to me to talk some sense into him because she was very unhappy with his decision, which she saw as 'blindly optimistic'. As someone who has been in tuition industry for well over 10 years, and who has friends who are teachers, I advised him that it wasn't worth it, and the amount of admin work and politics was gonna suck all the joy of teaching out of him.

This dude is one of the most honest Mr nice guys I've ever met. He has no 心机，and bless his heart, is often too pure for this world. I could tell he was genuinely sincere about the role that a teacher plays in the development of our next generation, but the MOE system, as it is, squeezes teachers so hard that one does not simply survive without a superhuman level of passion. He couldn't understand my cynicism, so against everyone's advice, he went for it.

Cue mountains of paperwork, study plans, frivolous complaints from parents, micromanagement by senior teachers and HODs, marking, CCAs, 'volunteering' for events', he couldn't make time for his family, and struggled for the better part of three years.

Threw in the towel and decided to leave after his bond finishes. He now tells me that he has become jaded by it all, and the detour from his engineering career was simply not worth it.