Monday, August 20, 2012

To teach or not to teach?

(Sorry, I'm currently in a Shakespeare class, and we just devoured Hamlet.)
It's a fact commonly known that I've always wanted to be a high school teacher.  While I can't ever explain it very well, I have this strange obsession with high school.  Not that I'd ever want to go back as a student.  Ew.  But I believe there's a reason why there are so many shows/movies/books that involve high school students--those four years in a person's life are pivotal.  Because when you're in high school and you make a fool of yourself or you get dumped or you deal with lame girly drama, you really do feel like the world is ending all around you.  And although years later you recognize that few things were truly important in high school, the fact that, at the time, everything was everything does not change.
So, why have I always wanted to teach high school students?  The idea that I could be a part of those years for people who are going through exactly what I went through?  The idea that I could ingrain a love of words into my students?  Utterly priceless.  (Well, not actually. I would get paid to do it. But I digress.)
(Just writing those few paragraphs makes me all giddy and excited.)
But now, for some reason unbeknownst to me, I'm questioning the fate that I created for myself.  And I'm not sure what I should do.  I made my career choice so long ago that it's like I never actually made it.  Teaching was just written down in the books for me before I popped out of my mother's womb.  Or so it seems.  I'm finally looking around, though, and I'm seeing that a plethora of choices are still available to me, and I honestly don't know how to choose.  How does one go about making huge life decisions like this?!

I need to take a page out of Rory Gilmore's book and make a pro/con list.

1 comment:

Kim said...

I hope you will not ingrain a love of the word "ingrate" in your students, 'cause no one should ever be one of those. But it's okay to question; the pro and con list sounds good.