Lucy Kellaway is giving up her 31-year career with the Financial Times to become a maths teacher.
There are few jobs I can personally imagine enjoying more than writing a column for the Financial Times.
Perhaps I need to get out more, I know. But Lucy Kellaway got me stuck on the idea, as I’ve long been reading her often satirical writing on office life, as well as her excellent series of interviews in the Financial Times.
We see the output of her work, but also get a feel for how she does it and what she personally takes from it. It’s fun, flexible, satisfying, creative and high profile. She also gets to meet and lunch with a diverse range of smart and interesting people.
So you can imagine my complete surprise to read today that she’s giving it up to do something completely different, something she’s never done before – that pays terribly, that’s anything but flexible, and gets nothing like the recognition of a newspaper columnist.
Kellaway is quitting her 31-year journalism career for a new career in teaching maths, and she’s inviting her readers to follow.
She’s given plenty of notice – writing she’s not leaving the FT until July 2017, just after her 58th birthday – and will start teaching maths in what she describes as a “challenging” secondary school in London.
“I have autonomy, great colleagues, and the freedom to write about whatever interests me,” she writes on the decision to make the move. “Yet though I still love what I do, I’m not getting better at it. And as I hope to go on living for many more decades, it seems mad to spend my whole life doing one thing.”
She’ll also put more into her Now Teach charity, that she co-founded earlier this year, encouraging professionals who’ve already had the “successful career” to “do something even more important, now teach.”
The UK-based charity aims to appeal to anyone who’s feeling ready to try something new and feel useful. In calling for applications, it invites people who’re “ready for the hardest thing you’ve ever done.” Currently in its pilot year, it’s calling on experienced private and public sector professionals to help in mainly teaching maths, sciences and languages.
Kellaway writes that she can’t be the only “50 something person” who wants to have a second career. While she hates the phrase “give something back” she believes being useful is a luxury she can now afford: “I’m part of the lucky generation with houses and pensions – so a drop in salary doesn’t terrify me in the way it once did.”
Kellaway’s the daughter of an English teacher, but said it was her own daughter who really inspired her, after hearing her stories about the challenges of getting a classroom to listen, as well as the letters of gratitude her students sent her.
She said during a live Facebook event yesterday that the charity has been overwhelmed by the level of interest. “It’s not a ‘bankers’ thing only,” she said. “Actually, it’s anybody who’s done other stuff for the last few decades … Anyone who thinks teaching might be fun in a floaty, romantic way, we definitely don’t want them.”
It’s a brave move — she’ll have to re-learn maths and re-train as a teacher — and a very public one that looks set to see other professionals follow her lead. It’ll be interesting to see if it inspires any further such initiatives locally here too.
