Sometimes "being walked all over" is actually just doing your job as expected but people get all sensitive about either the expectations or how to actually interact with a boss. The "me, me, me" isn't just today's students but an awful lot of our young adults. Work/Life balance is important but sometimes you have to pick your career based on that balance as opposed to setting your balance then expecting your career choice to fit around it. I need ER doctors to work at night. If you want to be a doctor but not work nights then be a pediatrician with your own clinic working 8 to 4. But guess what, even those folks end up working on call hours if they also deal with newborns in the hospitals. I was a different director at 22 with no family versus 35 with young kids at home to 45 with kids involved in activities to 50 when I'm an empty nester and more available again. Work ethic matters. Best piece of advice my grandfather gave me for my career, (mind you he had an 8th grade education and was a self-made blue collar millionaire) was to work 10 hours a day no matter what field you end up in. That leaves 14 hours NOT at work. When I skewed that, I lost my career and family. When it got back into balance, I found both of those things again.

Trust me, I'm not for being walked over or abused. But I see a lot of complaining from folks who just need to do their job. I rarely did sectionals. But that's because I could get the job done during the day, (with how we were structured and the number of folks in the classroom during most classes). It was called collaboration. But when I couldn't do them during the day I did them before or after school. That was the expectation. And at the point I could no longer meet the time requirement for the job, it was time to leave. I've said for years HS band directing is the job for the young and unmarried these days. It is not conducive to having a family. And when it got to that point, I knew it was time to leave. Not time to fight with my head about how I was NOT going to do the job as they saw fit. It was time for me to find something that fit MY time needs instead of the other way around.