I can’t say that I know what I want to do with my life at this point. I realize this makes me sound repetitive. I assure you, however, that this entry has nothing to do with my pre-quarter life crisis.

To begin with, I’ve gone through quite a bit of different career choices since I was about sixteen. I started out wanting to study film, then I looked into the arts, journalism, marine biology, screenwriting, etc. One career that I have always held onto as an option in case everything else didn’t work out is teaching. For some reason, teaching has always been a fallback career choice. I remember having an hour long conversation with my grandfather once about how much we both valued the teaching career. However, I never once, when asked, “What do you want to do?”, admitted to considering it as my future. I still don’t quite understand why, though I have a few theories. It’s a common understanding that teachers don’t make the big bucks. A great deal of them hardly make enough to provide for themselves. So, the few times that I have mentioned possibly wanting to be a teacher, the typical reaction is “Well, you know. They don’t make a lot of money”. Not only does that response annoy me, but the fact that it is accurate in many cases pisses me off to no end. Teachers have, in my opinion, one of, if not the most, rewarding, honorable and reputable careers that any person on the face of our planet can aspire to have.

How is it that the one career that shapes the minds and potential of countless children can be frequently overlooked? It doesn’t make any sense to me. What teachers offer their students is an impact that lasts throughout students’ entire lives. In a way, that makes teachers immortal. I will never forget the teachers that made an impact by helping shape me into the person that I have become up until this point. If that isn’t a job that should be rewarded with the highest respect, I don’t know what is. If I could offer kids the same inspiration, creativity, and knowledge that my favorite teachers have offered me throughout the years, I would die fulfilled. That is precisely why I’ve been strongly considering a career as a teacher, more specifically, for middle school or high school. I love working with kids of all ages, considering I’m still a kid myself. I think that’s what makes the idea of teaching high school a little too weird right now. The other day, I was trying to remember at what point, throughout my education career, that school become important to me to the point where I became interested and involved. That specific moment for me was in the eighth grade. Middle school marked the turning point for me in which what I was being taught became interesting and eye-opening for the first time. I want to be able to impact the way kids think during the period in their lives where it matters the most. I have a lot more I could say on the topic but I’ll add to this entry a little later. I plan to continue blogging about what career I end up deciding on but, I can assure you, teaching is absolutely no longer a fallback plan.