That Moment

There comes a moment when you have look at your life and say, "Am I doing what I really want to do?"

Not what someone says is a good choice, not what sounds logical on paper, not what looks like the best option.

Am I doing what I really want to do?

And if the answer is no, you have to figure it out what it is instead.

~

I think the whole idea of college is confusing to a lot of us. Before you even move in, you have to pick a degree, which will be the basis for the rest of your educational career. You get into your classes, and some of us realize that we hate those classes. And so you change your major to something you're pretty sure you'll like better. And the training you get is what prepares you for what you'll supposedly do for the rest of your life.

And suddenly you find yourself sitting on your couch, eating pizza and bawling as you finally put into words the thought that has crept up on you when you're lying in the dark and finally able to drop the front: 

"I don't want to be a teacher." 

The job you've imagined, trained for, dreamed about really isn't what you thought it was.

You start to panic a little. This was the plan! This was my future! This was what I was banking on! I want so much to love this! Guys, I am good at teaching! Kids learn from me! I'm planning and doing and teaching and organizing and gathering resources so I can do this on my own!

And I don't want to do it.

I'm about a month into student teaching, and it's going really well. And I've been warned, "Don't write this off already, you've only just started." But you know how you just know about some things? This is one of those things.

The problem is, I don't know what else to do. I've talked over so many options with my ma in the past two days, I"m just getting more and more confused. It doesn't help that I have this perspective in my head (wrong though it may be) that I have to find a job "worthy of my degree." Something in my head tells me it has to be something that will send me upward, something that will challenge me and so many others, something that will influence the world.

Is it bad that all I want is a 9-5 job that I can leave at work?

Is it bad that I've cost my family thousands of dollars - earned myself thousands of dollars' worth of debt - worked for four-and-a-half years on a degree and all I want to do is be a writer?

It is bad that I'm coming to the end of a very long and hard journey and want to ditch the path I thought was mine, running back to the love I developed in third grade but didn't see as a viable option?

I haven't had a day off since Labor Day, working sixteen-hour days during the week and eight-hour shifts on the weekends. I am exhausted, physically and emotionally. And at first I wondered if all of this meltdown might just be a side effect of this. But I don't think this is just me being tired. I believe that when you get to the point where you're too exhausted to put up your defenses, the truth comes out.

I don't want to teach.

I'm going to finish student-teaching - stopping that has never been an option. But when I graduate, I don't think I'll be found in a classroom.

Prayers as I question what I'm supposed to do - get a job, move out, go for my masters - would be appreciated.