I Left The Biotech Industry - 1595 Words

I left the biotech industry in 1995 after working for five years as a biochemist. I was unhappy working in a research laboratory all day with little interaction with people. One night I was watching The Power of Myth program on Public Broadcasting Service TV channel where Bill Moyers was interviewing Joseph Campbell. I heard Mr. Campbell repeat several times a statement that resonated with me â€Å"follow your bliss† he said. For the next several months, it was the only thing that I was thinking. Where is my bliss I kept wondering? My wife was pregnant with my son, and I was stuck in a job that I did not like. Fortuitously, my lab director assigned me to train a group of visiting biologists from England for a week on the use of the†¦show more content†¦I continued teaching for two more years until my daughter was born. During that time, I was voted for three years in a row as Students favorite teacher. However, I grudgingly left teaching to be able financially to support my growing family. I started an environmental consulting business with my wife who is a biochemical engineer and was working as an environmental consultant for a firm in Orange County. For the next eighteen years, I developed and managed a successful company called Ecotek. Though, teaching was always on my mind and the part that I enjoyed the most about Ecotek was the environmental training and the presentations that I did for my clients. My three children are in college now, but four years ago I started hearing that inner voice telling me to follow my bliss. I knew that I wanted to go back to teaching, so I took several assignments as a substitute teacher to see if I have what it takes to be a good teacher. I found out quickly that I want to teach and that I enjoy it, school administrators offered me several long term substitute positions and soon enough, within a year, I left the business to my wife and started teaching biology full time at Lynwood Unified School District. It has been four happy years since I returned to the teaching profession. As a biology teacher at Firebaugh High School, I feel that