Are you working as an auxiliar de conversación in Spain? Starting to think about what to do when your year finishes, whether to renew or not? I’ve been here for several years, renewing a few times and finding other work outside teaching and boomeranging back to teaching. Here’s my story, but disclaimer: it’s not very clean-cut or simple!

“So…. Much…. Silence.”

That was my first thought when I arrived on my first day to the hardwood-floored office, with its enormous windows and balconies, likely converted from what used to be a flat in a beautifully-preserved building in Madrid’s Salamanca district on Calle Alcalá.

I sat down at my new desk, opened my work laptop, and started plugging away at some work. I drank coffee or tea when I felt like it, I went to the bathroom whenever the need arose, I ate lunch when I wanted at my desk (or in Retiro Park), I decided on the general flow of my work, and most notably, I spoke maybe 200 words the entire day. “Huh,” I mused to myself, “this certainly feels a lot calmer than my old life.”

It was early summer of 2019 and my old life, just two weeks before, had involved spending my mornings from 8:30 until 3:30 shuttling myself from one high school classroom to another, dodging flying pencil cases and hundreds of noisy hyperactive teenagers on the way, with an occasional free period spent in a crowded teacher’s lounge, frantically printing off lesson plans.

Talking, talking, talking, and more talking. My job as an auxiliar de conversación, or Language Assistant, involved talking endlessly, from morning to evening. To teenagers, to little kids, to adults. Explaining my life story over and over, role-playing, explaining concepts, leading activities. Sometimes trying to manage a classroom of 12-year-olds by myself, which I guess is the closest thing to herding cats I’ve ever done.

Granted, in my auxiliar life, I only “officially” worked 12 hours a week, and in my new life I’d be working 40. But if you’ve been in my shoes as an auxiliar, you know that you can easily total well over 25 or 30 hours of teaching a week by the time you add up clases particulares, academies, online classes, and one year, 6 hours in the evenings in the adult language school. I was fully booked up during both years of my auxiliar experience!

But when my second year came to an end, I had a lot of decisions to make. Should I stay or should I go? I had been really happy, especially in my second year in Cantabria, but I felt like I should probably “grow up” and do something more serious with my life. I decided not to renew my auxiliar role and to apply to a Master’s program in psychotherapy/counseling in the UK, thinking it would be interesting to live there (spoiler alert: it wasn’t) and that it would be cheaper than in the US (spoiler alert: it wasn’t). I did end up going to the UK, but I left before paying anything to the school. When I got there, I realized it wasn’t the right career path or the right place for me. Could I have waited and given it a fair try? Of course! But I don’t regret my decision.

So I was a little bit stuck – what to do now?

What to do after the auxiliar program?

A lot of people stay in Spain for a year or two, do the whole auxiliar experience, and then decide to go back home once they’ve seen enough of Europe and eaten enough pintxos/tapas/paella. Some people have jobs lined up or previous companies that want them to come back. Many others go back home and decide to endure the uncertainty of job hunting because they want to move their careers forward. Of course, plenty of people end up staying in Spain because they’ve fallen in love with a person or in general with life here.

Unfortunately, even if the decision to move back home is a positive one, most of us still have to take a ride on the roller coaster of reverse culture shock. During this time, which can last weeks, months or even possibly years, it’s normal to feel lost and nostalgic for the students and the Spanish cities or towns that we made our homes.

So what did I do after my second auxiliar year? A bit of everything! I went to my hometown to recalculate and try job hunting there, but no jobs seemed very interesting and I didn’t even get calls back from interviews for the jobs I thought I’d clearly be a great candidate for. I was riding that reverse culture shock roller coaster big time! Lost, sad, disconnected, feeling like a foreigner in my own hometown.

Close to Christmastime I got invited to come back to Spain, which made my little heart so happy. I was going to be an auxiliar for a third year, specifically in Galicia. Was it possible I accepted so quickly to soothe my culture shock distress and go back to a more familiar environment? Sure, it’s possible. But Galicia ended up being a fantastic decision and I spent an incredible year there full of growth and taking care of my mental health and meeting some lovely people.

While living in Galicia I got a part-time online teaching job with Lingo Live, a startup from the US that created a platform for one-to-one language learning for tech professionals (it no longer exists as it was bought by another company). So I was auxiliaring again, but in my non-school hours I taught English to adults in tech companies around the world and really enjoyed it. I felt like I was developing some new skills and slowly moving up a bit professionally.

Close to a year later, Lingo Live promoted me to Community Manager, where I managed around 50 other coaches around the world, helping them with various issues. It was a fully remote position, so it didn’t matter that I was in the midst of transitioning between Galicia, Salamanca and Santander in a whirlwind few months at the end of 2016.

Should I be an auxiliar again?

You would think that by now, I would answer the above question with a firm NO. Well, not so fast. Auxiliar Year Number Four was about to start. I moved to Santander because I could technically live anywhere with my remote US job and salary and I felt a lot of nostalgia for the place I had studied abroad. Cantabria, as it turns out, was desperate for auxiliares, and I figured it would be a safe way to make sure I didn’t lose my Spanish residency. (Did I need to be an auxiliar to save my residency? Probably not. Oh well.) So I accepted a high school assignment in Guarnizo, a small town next to Santander, which would only be from January to May. The teachers were wonderful and the kids were pretty nice. I somehow managed to do my full-time remote job, teach 12 hours a week in the high school, another few hours in an academy, take French classes at the EOI, and go swimming at the gym regularly. AND get my online TEFL certification at the same time! I have no idea how I survived that period, but I don’t remember feeling very stressed out.

From auxiliar de conversación to autónomo

After that auxiliar year ended, I decided to stop the ridiculousness and just have ONE job. I had now accrued enough time in Spain between the half-years as auxiliar to switch to longer-term residency. 2017 was the year that I became officially autónoma – legally freelance in Spain. I could finally demonstrate that I earned enough money and that they should let me stay here! So I dedicated myself 100% to Lingo Live and my coach community, working from home all the time, which felt a little strange and isolating after years of being with kids so many hours a week.

My experience working in a startup was interesting. There was a bit of ambiguity around processes and people seemed to wear a lot of hats. There was a decent amount of turnover, which is normal in startups. From the beginning, I immediately knew that I didn’t want to be a community manager long-term but it was a great fit for my current life and a stepping stone toward… well, something.

Auxiliar de conversación for life?

Your head is likely spinning by now. Around a year and a half after becoming a community manager, I came to a crossroads in which I decided I should try to upskill myself in technology and become a web developer. I taught English to a lot of tech employees and they seemed really happy in their jobs, and the software engineers at my company encouraged me to give it a try, they thought I could probably succeed.

All excited about the possibilities, I signed up for a Master’s program (online) here in Spain and decided to dedicate myself to it full-time. I gave my notice to Lingo Live, which wasn’t 100% necessary – I absolutely could have kept working while studying. But I felt like I needed to dedicate all my focus to learning. It seemed crazy to give up such a great job, but looking back, it was exactly the right move: most of my team (which would have included me) was laid off a few months later. Sigh, startup life.

While I had enough savings to get by for a while, I started to stress about money running out, which led me to – yes, you guessed it – going back to the auxiliar life! This time I was asked to come back to the school in Castro-Urdiales where I had worked my second year. My lovely “boss” Miren pleaded with me to come back and made me a very easy schedule to allow me plenty of study time. So, back to teaching again, taking on several private students (there was a huge demand!) while learning JavaScript and React. I ultimately let teaching take over my personal life, giving up nearly all my afternoons and evenings for the chance to make more money. What happened with the Master’s program? Nothing! I survived one semester. It wasn’t the right program anyway, and the university did away with it a year later.

As yet another year as an auxiliar was coming to an end and no web development degree had yet been obtained, I started applying for jobs around Spain. I was ready to spread my wings a bit and get out of Cantabria, where it seemed like my only professional options would be auxiliaring or working in academies.

I ended up landing a Marketing and Editing position at a small publishing company in Madrid, on the 5th floor of a beautiful building on Calle Alcalá. Thanks to already being legally in Spain as autónoma, I was able to be hired by that company. I decided to accept it, as money was getting tight and it seemed like an interesting experience. So hello to my first Spanish full-time work contract, and goodbye autónomo status, time to darme de baja.

As I mentioned before, it was quiet. So much flexibility in the day to attend to personal needs, no need to rush from one place to another, a sense of general calm (most of the time), and an office of young people conveniently located a 15 minute walk from my apartment. I improved my writing skills, learned how to hand-code emails in MailChimp, and practiced my basic JavaScript in Shopify’s backend. I took a lot of elevator selfies (hey, I was dressing kinda professionally for the first time in years!), occasionally went out to lunch at local Chinese, Indian, or poké restaurants, and I even got sent to Austria for a conference!

So why on earth, in early 2020, did I opt to go BACK to teaching yet again? Aside from the issue of having a couple of tricky personalities😬  to deal with in my job, the main catalyst for the change was this: I sat down and read Your Money or Your Life, one of my favorite finance books, and charted out my financial position and my goals, and realized that I could increase my earning potential by taking on some private students. (Againnnn, old habits die hard.)

Little secret: If I take an honest look back, I think I developed impostor syndrome, believing I wasn’t valuable in the professional marketplace after so many years teaching part time.

While browsing TusClasesParticulares, the best website to find private English students to tutor in Spain, I found a company looking for a native teacher for adult professionals in the pharma industry around 20-25 hours a week. After a quick informal interview, the gig was mine. The main downside: I had to start commuting again. I managed to work out a part-time contract with my marketing and editing job, so ended up doing both of those jobs – even during the pandemic at home! – until summer of 2020, when I let the marketing/editing job go and dedicated myself 100% to teaching.

The bright side: I’ve been able to consistently earn the same or more net income (after Seguridad Social and taxes) working 25 hours a week as I was in my 40-hour-a-week job. I’ve been able to stay home and do my classes by phone or Teams. I’ve been able to travel a bit and give classes from, for example, a balcony overlooking a beach. With my sufficient income, I’m able to set boundaries like not taking any students after 5pm (though I easily could!). My students are very well-behaved and kind, and we have some wonderful conversations. I have a lot of time off for summer and holidays (unpaid).

The tradeoffs: The number one tradeoff is that the online situation is pandemic-based. So my comfortable remote work life has an expiration date. (2024 update: this definitely did NOT happen, I am still remote!) Also, now I’m back to not being able to take bathroom breaks exactly when I need them, and I have to make sure to block out 2-3pm as my sacred lunch hour. My schedule wildly varies from week to week. I have a lot of unpaid time off, so my income varies a lot. Students always need to reschedule and cancel, and I’ve been left waiting for some of them the entire class period when I could’ve been teaching someone else or doing other things. (Honest feelings: getting no-shows and cancellations really starts to wear on my professional self-esteem after a while.)

Sometimes it feels like my life is just a more grown-up version of auxiliaring. I also get the nagging feeling I’ve developed impostor syndrome, and that I’m not qualified enough for any other jobs. I need to upskill myself, but web development is no longer the best option for me. There’s a bit of a grass-is-greener situation here, where I miss the structure and teamwork of being in a company, and when I’m working in a company, I miss my freedom and connecting with students.

Will I be able to continue to increase my income in the future to reach my financial goals? Do I need to try to get back into full-time company work? Or do I need to just be content with my life as a teacher and ride the wave that is a massive demand for learning English language skills?

So as you can see, there IS life after auxiliaring, but it’s not always clear what to do other than teaching. Even when you stop teaching, it can be hard to resist being pulled back in.

We shall see what the future brings, but one of my new year’s resolutions is to kick impostor syndrome to the curb and take a deeper look at my career goals!