Masters & EFL: Why I Studied Photography MA but Never Let Go of Teaching EFL

When the world ground to a halt during the pandemic, a lot of things stopped making sense. Plans unraveled. Work paused. And like so many others, I found myself sitting in unfamiliar stillness, asking: What now?

For me, the answer came in two parts—one practical, one deeply personal.

I’d been teaching English as a Foreign Language for years. I loved it—not just the language part, but the connection. The conversations. The cultural exchange. EFL teaching had taken me across continents and into the lives of people with wildly different stories—and I wasn’t ready to give that up.

Photographic series UF

But I’d also spent years as a photographer, and underneath all the Zoom calls and lesson plans, there was something creative I hadn’t quite finished. The pandemic cracked something open. It gave me time, and—like it or not—it gave me space. That’s when I decided to do my Master’s in photography.

Not to switch careers. Not to abandon teaching. But to process everything, to reconnect with a visual language that had always run alongside my work with words.

The thing is, I’ve never seen photography and teaching as separate. Both are about communication. Both involve paying close attention. And both—when done well—reveal something honest about how people live, think, and feel.

During lockdown, teaching went online. So did studying. I found myself in this strange dual world—leading English lessons by day, and making images, essays, and installations by night. And somehow, it made sense. One helped fund the other. One kept me grounded; the other kept me questioning.

What surprised me was how often the two overlapped. My EFL students would share stories that found their way into my projects. My creative work pushed me to think differently about language—about clarity, emotion, and nuance. And at the core of both was the same instinct: to connect.

I never wanted to choose between them. I still don’t.

If the pandemic taught me anything, it’s that identity doesn’t have to be linear. You can be a teacher and an artist. You can study a Master’s in photography not to change careers, but to deepen your understanding of the world. And you can carry all those experiences back into the classroom, where they quietly reshape the way you teach, listen, and guide.

So no, I didn’t do the MA to move on from teaching. I did it to stay curious. To keep asking questions. And to make some kind of sense out of a time when very little did.

And in that way, it was the most useful thing I could’ve done.