Hello everyone! Today, I thought I’d share my experience quitting my job.

---

You might be wondering why I’m sharing this. Well, basically because I realized as I was quitting that I’d never quit a job before! Well, except for retail jobs years ago, but never a professional job. It was a long different than what I expected too. I figured that at 30 years old, I was way too old not to know how to properly quit a job so I wanted to share my experience in case anyone needed some insight to it.

---

Why I’m Quitting My Job

In case you missed my recent coffee chat or just came across this post due to the content, I thought I’d share why I’m quitting my job to begin with.

I am quitting my job as an academic and finance advisor for an online university just a few days shy of three months. I’m pretty sad to do so actually! While the work itself was not really for me, which I’ll also explain more in a bit, it was the people that made the job fun. Right away, I felt so welcomed and supported by my direct team but also the department as a whole. The people were really great and the people can really make or break your experience, so I was thrilled to have such a great team.

But the work itself wasn’t fulfilling for me. I applied as an academic advisor only but was offered a hybrid role of academic and financial advising, which I did not want to do. However, the money was pretty good and I needed a job after having been unemployed for about a year due to the pandemic. I had been furloughed from my previous job in the event management industry and I hadn’t been able to find a job within that field due to the pandemic bringing events to a near halt. So a friend referred me to her employer and I took the job anyway.

While it might sound cool and the benefits were pretty good (free tuition at the school!), I was kind of disappointed by the work. I had expected to be a full advisor, but instead the actual advising was done through the Deans for each school within the university and the “AFA’s” were sort of the in-betweens. The AFA’s also ended up being more customer service-y because we were on phone queues and so students would call in with questions about their homework or tech issues even though they had the numbers to reach out to the student library resources or tech help. They also expected so much hand-holding which was wild to me because these were all graduate or doctoral students I was working with. When I went to school I never would have expected my advisors to basically walk me through my program. I did everything myself! But here I was expected to send constant reminders to students for things like attendance. It was crazy being expected to remind grown adults to “attend” their class!

I also had problems with the financial portion of the job. There was just too much room for error in my opinion! I never really got the hang of it, if I’m being honest, but I was expected to figure out how much money students needed to borrow for their financial aid and it was crazy to think that I had so much influence over how much debt the students took out. Especially since I wasn’t super confident with the numbers too. I would often ask others for help and without fail I always had the wrong number… Yikes! I was so confused and annoyed that there wasn’t an automated way to make sure we got the right number every time.

As I mentioned, I had only been at the company for less than three months, so of course that wasn’t enough time to really be able to get used to it all and then provide feedback, although I’ll admit I could have if I had really wanted to. But the department as a whole was already so established and large that I knew that feedback would not be easily implemented. I was used to working in a small group that would just let me do my own thing and encouraged experimenting with new methods so that was a new experience for sure.

But like I said, the people were really cool to get to know and everyone was super kind. The training was also really well organized. Even though it was intense, it was super effective and really covered a lot in a few weeks. That in particular was very impressive! They also already had a lot of materials already created like email templates that were easy to access and ready to send, standardized ways to do tasks (although everyone would still do it slightly differently of course), and there was a dedicated all-day Zoom session with people who were ready to help answer any and all questions for us. The support was incredible! So I was sad to go due to all those positives.

Now, back to the actual event that caused me to put in my notice. I got a new job! A former coworker reached out to tell me her new company was hiring and it was back in the events industry. I had realized how much I missed it and how passionate I’d become about events, especially after seeing that many of my new coworkers wanted to be advisors and that’s why they worked as advisors. I applied, got a great offer, and I couldn’t say no. So I wrote up my resignation letter and prepared to tell my boss.

Telling My Boss & Team I’m Quitting My Job

Funnily enough, my boss had happened to schedule our first one-on-one right when I needed to give my notice. She scheduled it a few days in advance and when I saw the invite I was already waiting to hear if I got an offer or not so I knew right away that I might to have to use that meeting to give my notice.

Sure enough, I got an offer and so I just had to wait for that meeting as my boss was out of the office until that day anyway. I jumped onto our call and I have to admit, I was so nervous. I was really worried my boss would be mad or something! Ultimately, I had nothing to worry about. My boss was super supportive and excited for me, although she did say she was sorry to see me go and told me she knew the team would miss me. She said that even though I hadn’t been with the team for very long, I had such a strong presence on the team already (I blame my Leo Rising) and I’d be missed.

I also had a quick call with HR. It was a very informal conversation. The guy asked me why I was leaving and then asked what the offer was. I was honest with why I was leaving and reiterated that I had a positive experience with the university. I also let him know I was uncomfortable letting him know how much the offer was for but that it was a lot more than what I was currently making. I talked to someone in my ballet class who is in HR and she said he was probably trying to decide if it was worth trying to convince me to stay or not, and said that if the person does say the offer was high or if it was like their dream job and such that she oftentimes knew right away that there was no point trying to retain them. I think that was the impression the HR guy got because he just wished me luck, said he’d send more info and shipping labels for my work stuff, and then told me to reach out with any more questions.

A few days later we had our team meeting and so my boss shared the news. The crazy thing was that one of my other coworkers had her own announcement. She was taking a lateral move to another team so the team was already surprised at that news. Then my boss shared mine and everyone’s jaws dropped. They were pretty shocked at the update but they were also really happy and supportive too.

The next day I ended up leading the team’s game time meeting where we just hang out and play a game. We had a new team member joining us so I had thought we could do a “would you rather” session so she could get to know everyone. At some point one of the team members asked me if I was okay with sharing more about where I was going, which I was fine with. I did share with them what my new job was and why I had taken the offer and such. They were all so lovely and happy with me and I was so grateful that they took the news so well.

My Experience Overall

I am so grateful this experience was so positive overall. I think I was so nervous because my old job would not have been like this at all. My boss at my old job would take it so personally when anyone left and I saw many people treated terribly during their last few weeks (well, we were all treated terribly but even more once they put in their notice). So I unfairly projected those expectations onto my new team. It was the complete opposite of what I thought it would be like.

I do totally get why there are so many articles that harp on the advice to be positive and grateful when quitting a job too. I find it so difficult to be the one that is leaving to be honest. When I was furloughed at my last job I had a similar feeling to what I’m feeling now. It’s so exciting to have a new opportunity or such a drastic change, but I want to be humble about it. I will say that when I was furloughed it was easier because I had wanted to leave anyway but it was also kind of weird because I didn’t have anything lined up. This time I do have a job waiting and the idea of being the “newbie” again is a little daunting but I know I can handle it!

---

So that’s my experience with having quit my job for the first time! Let me know what your top tip for quitting a job is. I’m pretty curious to hear them!

Thanks for reading!

Pamela

Follow me on social media!

Instagram | Youtube | Facebook | Twitter | Bloglovin‘ |Pinterest | Poshmark | Email