Anyways, several posters mentioned that teaching and writing were not great combinations. I'm curious, for those who've tried it, what level did you teach, and what was your experience? And any there any current/former doctoral students who have experience trying to balance the two?
UK based answer (but I suspect similar issues exist elsewhere).
I'm an ex teacher. I used to teach in state school (what you call public school in the USA). I've always done writing alongside everything else I've done in life since I was 12.
The workload of teachers is beyond ridiculous. There is far, far more to teaching than just being in the classroom, planning lessons and marking work. I was up at 5am every day to plan lessons. My day in school would finish around 6pm (classes finished before 4pm but there was always a load of meetings to go to and other stuff you had to do). And then marking after that. One weekend day would be taken up with catching up on marking. The other on being in an exhausted stupor and trying to do household related things.
I quit, following advice from my doctor, for the sake of my health and my kids. Yep I was trying to be a lone parent somewhere in all that, and honestly, the fact I had to say "sorry I can't help you with your homework, I've got this pile of other kids' homework to mark" and "sorry we can't go anywhere at the weekend, got marking to do" is my number one reason for not being a teacher.
As for writing... I did that here and there to stay sane but the quality of what I wrote then wasn't all that, mostly because I didn't get time to re-read and edit it properly.
This is just the volume of work... bear in mind that being in a classroom with 30+ teenagers (or 30 five year olds, for that matter) is extremely demanding. You're constantly mentally alert. If you compare it to a normal job, a day teaching is like giving presentation after presentation, on all different topics, for the whole entire day, while also being responsible for crowd control at your presentations. And the crowd doesn't particularly want to be there. It's exhausting. That's just the in classroom bit. Now add in planning and marking. Now add in a ridiculous amount or record keeping that's required by inspectors but doesn't actually benefit the children but you have to do it anyway or they'll fail your school. Now add in meetings. Now add in dealing with parents and detentions for naughty children... and bear in mind that "free" periods during the day get taken up by covering other teachers' classes due to absence. Probably stress-related absence.
The main issue is that current teacher's workloads are incompatible with sanity or having any kind of life outside of teaching. There is a very serious recruitment crisis* due to so many teachers quitting for the sake of their health and sanity or simply because they want a life outside of teaching, but no-one's bothering to listen to ex teachers and fixing the reason why. After I quit teaching, I put my CV on a government jobseeker's website. My CV stated plainly that I was no longer teaching. It listed my transferrable skills and that I wanted a completely different job. I've been in my new job for more than two years, and I still get bombarded with emails from teaching recruitment agencies offering me teaching work. Bizarrely, not just teaching work in my specialism (biology/sciences) but also teaching English. They're that desperate they'll take science teachers to teach English.
These days I work for a mortgage company. A 9-5 job. Strictly 9-5 as in everyone turns off their computer and exits at 5pm and by 5:05pm it's like a ghost office unless overtime is available to work until 6pm. Working to 6pm is "overtime" *mind blown* lol. The main difference is that at my new job, I switch my brain into work mode at 9am, and switch off work mode at 5pm, then don't think about work all that much until the next day, leaving me free to have a life... be there for my kids and do writing after my kids are in bed, or get up at 6am to do a bit of writing before I wake up the kids. Weekends are entirely my own. I can actually do stuff at the weekends! With teaching, you switch your brain into work mode a few days before the start of term in September, when you have to attend various INSET (ongoing training/development) days and a ton of meetings in preparation for the new term. You switch your brain out of work mode around the 18th December when you break up for Christmas. Repeat for the next two terms and finally get a slightly longer break at the end of July. But then spend your holiday acutely aware of how fast time's running out before you have to do the whole thing again.
This is coming from someone who loved being in the classroom with the children and loves teaching. People who hate teaching generally last about two weeks. If that. They won't even get through the first part of teacher training.
So yeah, if you're looking for a day job that's compatible with writing, choose a 9-5 one. Preferably one that doesn't take up so much of your mental energy that you've got nothing left when you sit down to write after work.