The road is long

The road is long; particularly my road to teaching. My road has been relatively short compared to many others in my newly acquainted teaching certificate program, but I feel as though my road to teaching was longer than it needed to be. If I may begin to elaborate....

In junior high and high school, I toyed with many career options for myself, one of the forerunners being teaching. Being a math teacher seemed like a great choice for me in that I loved math, my favorite teachers were my math teachers, and I had a knack for teaching/tutoring others in the subject of math. 

So why did I go to college with my eyes set on a dual degree in architecture and construction management? 

First off, my beloved math teachers seemed to think I shouldn't go in to teaching. Not because I wouldn't have made a good teacher, but because teaching wasn't something they would have recommend to many, if anyone at all. Similarly, my mother, who is also a teacher, discouraged this career path because of the extremely poor monetary compensation of the profession.

Secondly, and somewhat connected to the first reason, was this societal notion that teaching was somehow not a high ranking or intellectual career. When I read this notion presented by William Ayers in To Teach (2010) just the other day was when I finally made the connection to this concept and how it had actually affected my career path. My math teachers didn't want me to teach because they thought it "beneath" my "skill and intelligence level" as Ayers says on page 18 of his book. Furthermore, I felt this pressure as well in my personal competitiveness with my sister who had chosen to pursue civil engineering. I wanted to show the world I was a smart, intellectual person by choosing a challenging and rewarding profession.

I reasoned that I like art as well as math, and the combination, therefore, would be architecture. Architecture would get me further in life and more praise than other careers I had 'previously considered.' 

So, after wading through prerequisites for the program, battling for admission to the architecture department, challenging myself with topics I pretended to be fully invested in, adding the intense dual degree in construction management, and avoiding the computer programs needed to succeed in the profession, I realized that the construction industry was far from what I wanted for my life.

I talked with my mother about my unhappiness and my regret for not going for teaching, and she relented saying that I should do what makes me happy; she finally gave me her explicit blessing to pursue teaching.

I finished my dual degree, researched certification programs, completed general knowledge prerequisites, was accepted to a program, and am currently in my first month of instruction.

Let's see where the road takes me now.