Once you find a job you love, it can be difficult to leave it and pursue a new career. An Ohio teacher is going viral for exactly this reason. He recently left his teaching career to work at Walmart, even though he says he “absolutely” loved it.
Seth Goshorn recently went through a huge change in his life, and he detailed it on TikTok. His video has been spreading rapidly across the internet.
In the video, 28-year-old Seth holds up his blue Walmart uniform. In the caption, he wrote: “Leaving teaching after 6 years to go be a manager at Walmart and make more not using my degree.”
The video got a lot of different reactions from his viewers and followers. So far, it’s been viewed over 816,000 times since he posted it.
In an interview with Good Morning America, Seth explained why he decided to leave his previous job as a teacher for a new career where he won’t even be using the degree he studied and worked towards. The reason was quite simply that the pay is much better in his new line of work.
He stated, “It was a lot better than I think people are used to and what people would expect.”
The new job provided not only a salary but also room for growth. He said, “You don’t have to go and get another degree or more initials or letters in front of your name to move up.”
Seth, the former schoolteacher, now earns $55,000 annually working as a stocking coach for Walmart in Massillon, Ohio. He was teaching in a district that he deemed paying “medium [to] upper” salaries, but this raise is more than he was making before. Seth says he earned $43,000 a year as a teacher.
The reasons he made the switch are clear when you consider his current earnings and the growth potential in the industry.
He stated, “There’s a misconception that we only work six or nine months out [of] a year”, based on his experience. Teachers have many responsibilities beyond lesson planning and preparing the classroom, he said, such as day-to-day activities essential to students’ welfare.
Seth says that, in addition to teaching, he also coached two sports and worked summer school before changing careers. He stated, “Think about how good our teachers can be if they could focus on just teaching and not have to work a second job on the weekends. They chose to be a teacher because they’re passionate about it. They didn’t choose to have to work a second job that comes along with it, and that’s the thing that I would have loved to see go away. ”
Although Seth is no longer teaching at the moment, he believes it to be an important profession. He stated, “I absolutely don’t want this to be that I’m just trying to discourage anybody from becoming a teacher. That’s not the case. I just want my teacher friends to be paid as they should be.”
Seth says that he plans to keep his doors closed for now and even renew his teaching license because he might want to go back to teaching students again one day.