Current Life and Career Goals

Hello, few and far between, distant readers! Why must I be so negative? But what are the odds of having a lot of views/readers? I’ll check my views, okay? Okay, I normally get 2 to 4 views per post. I’ve had a couple with 17 or 14, but it’s four or less posts out of 25 (edit: 26 now that this post is published (; ). It looks like ten to fifteen end up with two, three, or four views.

ANYWAY, I’m here today/-night because I’ve been craving blogging lately and have been in this really cool, refreshing creative mood. In my head, I’ve been describing it as a weird creative mood because I can’t ever remember feeling this creative for this long and it nagging at me. I also don’t know quite what to do to satisfy it either. Like, part of me thinks, “Blog obviously,” but I’ve been wanting to improve my writing by writing it all out and taking time to organize it and proofread it, which obviously will take more time, so that creative itch part of me is like, “ACK, TOO LONG, NOPE, I WANT INSTANT GRATIFICATION.” I’ve been having diarrhea of the mouth with instant gratification since I worked teaching first grade. The interventionist at our school (the person who does small group reading and mostly with the struggling kids) used that word to describe when kids choose the first answer on a test to quickly finish a question and move on or even the first one that looks even remotely correct instead of looking at all the answers to check for the best, etc. But yes, my creative itch wants instant gratification, so it doesn’t want me to take my time to make a better post because it wants the satisfaction of having the post done and out there and that itch satisfied.

I’ve been thinking lately about what I want most in life and what are my dreams, especially career-wise. Right now, I think I want to teach and write/blog most. I focus on blogging when I think about writing because I want the freedom in my writing. That’s what I enjoy about writing. That’s also why I have this anonymous blog—so that I can write almost anything I want to write and almost anytime and have very minimal if any negative consequences for it. Keeping it anonymous protects my reputation because my identity is hidden, so whatever I say shouldn’t (Remember, anything is possible.) make it’s way back to me and stick to my name and affect my reputation with possible future employers and on a smaller scale friends, family, and acquaintances, even. I’ve been thinking about writing on my personal/main account where my identity is known and my posts are visible to people who have access to that account with my identity attached to it, but I am scared of the possibility for negative consequences because I think some of the posts I have planned/brainstormed are controversial or at least have some controversial aspects in them, and I being the non-confrontational/anxious person that I am do not want to start shit or deal with people being pissed off at me. I just want people to hear me out and consider every single point that I make separately, not dismiss or discount my entire set of views and opinions laid out in that post because they might disagree with one point. I also don’t want my career opportunities in the future to be limited because of my opinions. I hate having to censor myself. Maybe that’s just part of being a mature and responsible adult, but it sucks. I wish we could be free to be ourselves as humans and have opinions and freely express them without having to fear whether we can have a job that we want later in life, but the fact of the matter is that you cannot do that, which sucks.

Then, I want to teach because I love learning and I want to inspire people to love learning, too, and I want to make a difference with children and show them that they can truly do anything they want. I truly believe that if you want something badly enough, you can achieve it. You can achieve anything! It’s how badly you want it that makes the difference. You will put in the work and time for even the hardest of tasks for you if you want the results badly enough. We have that potential, and I want to help students realize their potential relatively early in life—before college. I feel like college determines how much struggle you will have with setting up and creating your adult life. I know it’s very unlikely that you know what you want to do with the rest of your life by 18, but I would want students to at least know that they can do anything and that it’s okay to change your mind later but also find things they like and use those likes to find a job/career to support them in the mean time so that when they do change their mind (if they do), they have a savings to support them whether their change requires more schooling or some sort of training where they’ll need money help and be out of a job for a little while while switching. And as much as I loved spending six/seven/eight hours five days a week with ~twenty five-/six-/seven-year-olds, I feel like they are way too young at that age for me to instill all of that information in them. I feel like too much can happen from first grade to the end of high school for me to make a difference for those kids by college. Someone can undo all the work I’ve done in one year (more like nine months—hello, summer) in the eleven years that follow. I also had trouble effectively teaching first graders for more than one reason, and maybe I have more passion for teaching older kids so it stopped me from working as hard as I possibly could to work with first graders. I don’t know exactly what it is or why. I just know that now that I’ve taught first grade, even though I dearly loved my kids and coworkers and the environment there, I want to work with high school students more. And I can focus on teaching math and/or science instead of all subjects. Math and science are my favorite subjects. And I like that since the kids are older, I can censor myself a little less. I can help prepare them for adulthood, which includes sex, so I can teach them about that! Biology, health, I’m looking at you. I’m really passionate about sex education, which—side note—is part of why I stuck with becoming an OB/GYN for so long, because I feel like and have somewhat seen (and more so have heard with my mom having had worked as an OB/GYN nurse) that kids don’t get enough sex education but have sex and then get diseases or unplanned/unwanted pregnancies or just straight up don’t know what they’re doing and get in some sort of “trouble” with sex, even as seemingly trivial as not enjoying sex. I can go on and on about this. Basically, I think that sex should be enjoyable, too. I know some people think that sex should be for procreation only. I disagree. Also basically, it just seems like teaching older kids (middle or high school) is a better fit for me, so I’m going back to school in January for that. I think I may have posted about that already.

And I still want to have a life with my husband and kids. No, I have neither right now, but I want them one day, and I want to have time for work and them and the rest of my family and friends and myself. I want my current boyfriend to be my husband, by the way. I also think that you should feel that way about whoever you’re dating. If not, I don’t think you should date them, but that’s just me. Some people are into more casual relations/relationships. Some people don’t want to ever be married—have a lifelong partner, yes, but not necessarily marriage. That’s okay whatever you want! But I want what I want, too.(:

So in my head, I think the way that all of that would work out is teaching full-time, writing part-time, I guess. Or on/by commission—is that a thing? Basically, I’d write something and whore it out for someone to pay me to publish it or I’d reach out to a company/site, ask what they want me to write and what price, and write that for them. I don’t know anything about that. Maybe I’ll look more seriously into that later. I do like that idea of writing for Refinery 29. They seem really casual and do some opinion pieces it seems like. They seem cool to write for. One of my favorite blogger/online writers is Danielle Campoamour. I’m too lazy to look up her name. Sorry, girl. She even replied to me on Twitter once, which is super cool to me because she is a celebrity to me because she is well known or known better than me, which isn’t saying much, but I think you catch my drift. If I understand her writing correctly, writing is her career. She gets paid to write whatever she wants to. Maybe I’ll contact her for advice one day. I don’t know! I probably will since this is what I really want to do with my writing and don’t know who else/where else to go and she is doing exactly what I think I want to do in the writing world.

I think I’m ready to close this post out now!

Good night, and if you’ve stuck around to the end of this post, thank you.(: I appreciate it and love you for that!!!!

My First Job--Teaching!

I was here in May, telling you about my career switch. I decided to pursue teaching instead of medicine. I fell into what felt like the perfect job--teaching first grade at my old elementary school. I originally was aiming for high school, but none of the high schools contacted me back or had positions available. I thought about how much I would love to work with little kids for the rest of my life (in an effort to fill the void of not being able to have a baby once a year for the rest of my life and not having any right now--probably not the right reasons?) and decided to more seriously pursue teaching elementary students. Again, I fell into what felt like the perfect position. My coworkers were AMAZING--amazing, amazing, amazing. I can't speak highly enough of them. My kids were awesome, too. They were soooo cute! I loved them, and they seemed to have love me, too.(: Probably because kids are easy to impress but we'll go with I'm cool. My father said that kids are not easy to impress and that's just a knack of mine to get along so easily with kids. Maybe it is. I don't know, but I know I loved working with them. I wish school was more play learning, but it's not, which is where I think I started to not enjoy myself. Not enjoy myself? This post was starting off so positively. Why is it negative now? I resigned. That's why. Lesson plan writing was hard and time consuming and a pain in the butt. Granted, I did procrastinate a lot, but I ended up staying up past midnight most nights, and I came home crying almost every day. There were even a couple days where I cried once I got to school before students were let into the building. I was so stressed. Every time I got feedback (which was often because I had zero experience teaching), I took it so hard and so personally, beat myself up about it, and almost always cried. One good piece of advice that helped a little bit was from my father. He said that you can't take work personally--none of the feedback, nothing. But it still wasn't quite enough. Lesson plan writing was starting to come along somewhat. Then, they started adding more subjects for which to write lesson plans and how many I had to write at a time and pushing the deadlines forward, and I felt like I was drowning. I met with a mentor teacher almost every afternoon and while she did help a lot, the stress still wouldn't go away, and I had a lot of tunnel vision when it came to my work. I would focus in on one thing and overkill and get nothing else done. Then, the "best" part: Once I got better at writing lesson plans, I couldn't get the hang of effective instruction in a first grade classroom. When I was in school, the teacher did most of the talking and instructing. I noticed when I was graduating high school that something called Socratic Seminar was starting to make its way into the underclassmen classrooms. I had no idea what it was at the time besides a lot of group work and discussion, which in high school would have made me want to barf. Even in college, I think. Now, I think I'm more confident in myself to not be worried about what people will think about what I think and/or say. But there was something similar to Socratic Seminar in elementary instruction, also. It was where teachers directed classes to discuss the topic about which they were learning. I don't know if it was the control freak in me or panicking about time management and assuming first graders couldn't stick to a fast-paced schedule, but I could not let go of leading the discussions and not leaving much of a discussion available for my students. I would talk and talk and talk and talk. And I kept getting told not to do that and to let the students discuss, but something kept not clicking. I was too scared or something. So formal observations came around, and I failed mine. I expected but thought oh well and figured I'd just learn from it and move on. What I didn't know about were the remediation steps that are in place to help teachers help students. I would have been placed on an intensive assistance plan and re-observed in six weeks. If I failed the second observation, I'd be fired. Big deal, I thought. I would just get up and try again. THE CATCH: If I got fired from a teaching job in this school district, I could never teach in the district again. That was NOT what I wanted. In fact, it is my dream to teach in this school district. So I sat through the longest yet best meeting of my life with my principals--three hours. They found teachers to take my class for the afternoon, and we discussed my options and my concerns and questions. The first hour or hour and a half was a bunch of feedback and information concerning the observation and tips. The rest was talking about my options and how stressed I had been and how going back to school felt like an amazing option and the only thing stopping me from quitting that day was what my parents would say because my dad thought if I quit, then I was giving up. And I thought the same. Until I heard what happens if you get fired in this district, and he agreed. I knew my mom would have my back, but I was so worried about what my dad would think. And I miss my paycheck (even though all it was was one) and the little bit of financial freedom that was starting to come with it and my students, but I feel tons better. I will go back to school in January. I'm trying to decide between a Master's of Art in Teaching (MAT) or Bachelor's of Science in Secondary Education. I'm in contact with the dean of the college of education at my college write now, figuring that out. I was going to apply for a job at a local hospital (I am homesick of science and medicine.), but when I was on the phone with my grandma talking about how a nannying job seems like the dream (getting paid to play with kids and run errands), my mom offered for me to be her nanny and housekeeper since she and my father both work full-time and all of my siblings are in school and my stroke-ridden grandpa lives with us. So I accepted, of course, and I get to go to school and live at home cost-free and my parents will continue to provide for me financially if I keep up my end of the deal and keep our house clean and fed and take care of everyone's appointments. So that is my life update! My first job lasted less than two months, even though it was what I wanted. And I am bummed that having kids and getting married and moving in with my boyfriend (not in that order (-:) will be pushed back even further now, but I know I'll be happier and healthier this way instead of if I continued to push through with teaching first grade and possibly losing my job and having to move to teach public school or be limited to private schools here at home. Seven months ago, I thought I knew exactly what I was doing with my life. Now, not so much. I mean, kind of but also not really. I am super open to the possibility of anything changing and me not knowing what I'm doing. I know what I'm working toward now, but I do not know if this is what I'll want or be doing for the rest of my life. I also wish I could write on the side like opinion articles. Getting paid for that, too, would be nice but just to change the world with my writing is what I really want. I want to educate people and open their eyes to possibilities in the world around us.