When dreams collide

I spent a long time yesterday evening talking with my mother, particularly about my plans for the future. Well, my career plans. I've given it a year, and I still don't think I'm in the right profession. I can tolerate my job, but it isn't what I like to do, or what I feel I'm good at. I mean, I hate talking to strangers, I hate talking on the phone, and yet I spend hours a day doing just that. How did I get this job again?

I want to do what I wanted to do years ago - be a school psychologist. I could assess kids for special services, and work with teachers on how to optimally serve the special needs children in their classes. I would work at a school, which I really miss. Most of my contact would be with children and with teachers who I'd form professional relationships with. I think it would be a really good job for me, but I'd been thinking of it as impossible, as it requires a three year master's degree, with classes and practicums which would have to be done during the day, and I've got a day job and a mortgage. But my mom was telling me that I could get student loans that would be enough to pay not only tuition but the mortgage payments, especially if I continued to rent out a room. I could take a part-time job, but mostly live off of student loan money.

It felt so possible and so real when I was talking to her.

Lately, gender transition feels so possible and so real.

But I can't see them happening together. Maybe if I lived in Seattle or Portland, maybe. But in Fresno, getting a job at a school while displaying a male gender presentation but a female work history?

What do I want more, to have a fulfilling job or to be who I feel I am? What do I dislike more? My current job, or being called "she" and "ma'am", having a body that doesn't feel mine.

I could try, I suppose. I could transition on this job, then quit it and go to school as Jesse for three years, earn a good professional reputation, and look for a job in Fresno Unified or a nearby rural school district. (I'd run into too many old faces in Central and I refuse to work for Clovis.) By then I'd be looking and sounding quite male, having been on hormones for years, and even if my application showed that I'd previously worked under a female name, maybe it wouldn't completely kill my chances. And if I couldn't get a job as a school psychologist, I could apply to the County again as a social worker, then get promoted to practitioner (meaning social worker with a Master's degree - more responsibility and more pay). I'd be in a ton of debt, but otherwise what would I have lost? Or maybe I'd decide to relocate somewhere more trans-accepting.

Perhaps the real problem right now is my not-so-great grades and possible lack of prerequisites. Which I could take action to remedy. Maybe I should try for this. Am I being greedy?