Wow. I teach HS right now and am thinking about doing the same thing. Like any other job, it has its good and bad and I'm trying not to self destruct. But I find it boring and unchallenging. It makes me feel like I'm in a box, unable to change a lot of what is around me. It also makes me feel like this is it for me. There is no horizon.

My hypomania probably makes things worse for me in the long run. There are days when I just click - the lessons work, the kids are good, and I'm super productive. On the downside of hypomania, I'm off. But......what most of society doesn't understand is this - I need to be ON all day, every day. This isn't like dealing with adults - there is no comparison. There is no down time in a school. I'm either ON or the kids take over. One or the other. Trying to be *on* all day just drains my soul.

So, as time goes by, I'm becoming one of "them" - the teachers who come in, punch the clock, and came to the realization years ago that they can probably only reach half the kids (especially as teens). It is a self-defense mechanism. A wise colleague I respect once told me "if you let them drain your blood out of your body, they'll gladly drain every drop of it". They have so many more problems than I can fix. There's too much to do. There's too much to fix. Over time, I believe teaching has made my BP worse and I get angrier and more paranoid by the day. I'm just whipped.