The Day I Finally Quit My Job

It is the 5th of September. I woke up in the morning, checked my Instagram messages. Because of the few followers who sent me message requests wishing me a Happy Teachers’ Day, I finally realised that today isn’t just another day. It was the day when for the first time I was delivered the fact that some kind students even perceive me as their teacher, instead of just a normal YouTuber or a student studying in a different country. This was extremely humbling for me and my motivation was already at an all time high in the morning. In India, we used to celebrate Teacher’s Day in our university (it takes another 5 seconds to write the name of the university: Deenbandhu Chhotu Ram University of Science and Technology, Murthal) with Samosas and Cake for which the whole class contributed. The CR and his friends would go to the nearby market, get all the necessary drinks and food to have a “party”. If nothing else, it was a good time for us to bond with the teachers and ask them to let us know about some questions in our Minor Tests.

Living in Germany makes you forget about all these small celebrations and events that we used to enjoy in India, even when many of them were just made up. You always used to look in your calendar for the next big celebration or the next holiday and if there is any possibility to do a mass bank during the week to combine that holiday with the weekend and convert it into a super long weekend. I miss that in Germany and many a times, every weekday feels like just another day when you have to get up and start working, but today everything was about to change.

I got dressed, picked up my bicycle, went down 4 flights of stairs with it just to realise that I have left my earphones at my table. Would I go back now? No. I have travelled too far to go up again and fetch it. Going to work today had a completely different feeling associated to it. I had been expecting that but this was completely different. There are some common emotions which are strongly related to the event of leaving a job:

1. Purposelessness: As soon as you have no job to do, you might start getting this feeling of having no defined place to go, having no purpose of waking up in the morning or continuing throughout the day. If it was the job that you absolutely loved, this temporary feeling will only get stronger till the time you get yourself another one which makes you feel comfortable.
2. Lost Network: When you work at a place for a couple of years, you build a network of like-minded people there, who connected with you over a coffee standing in the common kitchen area or sitting in the canteen and many a times, they would be the added factor of motivation and excitement to going to work the next day. All the effort put inside building this network, meeting people and bringing them in your circle of important people feels like a waste, but there is something you can do about it, which I will discuss later on.
3. Financial Insecurity: If there is something we will all agree upon which job makes us feel is being financially secure. As soon as quit your job, that feeling of security is gone and you are on your toes about any kind of extra expenses happening in the daily life. This could also be an extremely strong motivation factor for continuing to find the next best job for you but only when you have a clear mindset and goal of what you want to do after you are done with this job.

After putting my precious E-bike in the garage of the office, I went to my work place, deleted all the personal data I had on the computer, moved on to filling out my checklist, which every employee has to fill out when they are quitting a company. It just consists of signatures from different departments of the company, so that they know that you aren’t taking anything with you when quit the company which belongs to them. The whole process went on really smoothly and the student supervisor was also extremely kind. Once the checklist was done and submitted back to the HR department, I went back to my computer to write a last email to the colleagues with whom I worked for more than 22 months.

I had the option to write an email, which is extremely standard and could be forgotten by everybody in a few seconds, many don’t even open seeing the title of the email, but that wouldn’t have brought me anywhere. So, I used this opportunity to fix the feeling of “Lost Network” and I made this last email more authentic by adding how this job helped me through the difficult times Alina and I were having back then when both of us were studying. Financial situation was tight and because I was readily given a job in the company, we had some inches of solid ground to stand on. I thanked for the nice time I had with them and also wrote my personal email id and other social media links (LinkedIn) where they could connect with me afterwards because you never know when they might need me or I might need them. So, in the end, I made sure that at least if somebody wants to reach out to me once I am no longer there, they have the opportunity to do that. Never let any effort that you made to go to waste just because you’re a bit nervous or not confident enough to take the initiative of letting them stay connected to you even when you are gone.

I was about to leave the office when I met another colleague who discussed with me in detail about my career opportunities back in early 2017 when I wasn’t sure any more of continuing my masters in structural engineering. Then, I met another one who gave us, the students in the companyChristmastmas gift which we all extremely appreciated. It was wonderful. It was just a beautiful ending of a very important chapter in my professional life.

On the way back to work, I crossed the spot where I took the above photograph. There was a reason to come along this road every week but there isn’t anymore. But maybe there is some other road, even way more classy than this one waiting for me?

Right now, I am working very hard to bring out the online courses on my website because that was really something I had been planning for a long time but never got the time or resources to materialize my ideas. Last 3 days, 4 hours of sleep has become common and I don’t think this will change in the upcoming 2-3 weeks. Out of all of the feelings related to quitting a job, “Purposelessness” isn’t the one I feel. I know I have a community of over 20,000 members on Facebook, over 90,000 members on YouTube and around over 5,000 on Instagram who look up to me and it is my responsibility to guide them to become the best possible versions of themselves during their journey to coming to Germany and avoid them from going to hundreds of traps laid out there by this beautiful education industry in India. I am more excited than ever, more determined than ever and have more freedom than I had in the past many months (at least till 14th October, when the university starts again!)

How was it when you quit your job? What was your experience? Let me know in the comments!