School Thoughts

Ever since I was fairly young, I'd wanted to be a teacher. Sure, I had the normal dreams of being a famous rock star but I was always far too grounded and practical to think that would ever be a reality. I always loved school and I always enjoyed pretending that I was a teacher for my younger brother or for my stuffed animals and dolls.

When I went away to college, I had decided that I was going to be a French teacher. I loved the French language and I had always had a 100 average in my French classes in High School. When I got to Appalachian, I found that I had placed out of the beginning French class I'd registered for into second semester intermediate French. Wow! I love it when I ace a test! The first day of class, I sat down at my desk and waited for the professor. She came into the class, closed the door and immediately started speaking French. I nearly cried because I couldn't understand the rapid-fire words that were coming from her mouth. My French teacher in high school had always concentrated on vocabulary and never counted off for pronunciation and rarely even made us speak French in class. I suddenly was wondering how I'd gotten so far on the placement test and if I should start at the beginning after all. I went back to my dorm after class and thought about it for a while and decided I'd stick with it. And, I started to learn out of self-defense. To this day, I still have a hard time understanding spoken French but I can read it even without practicing all these years...

Sophomore year in college was when the education part of my major started coming into play. I took an introduction to education course that was silly as most introduction courses are (I usually become more interested in things as they become more in-depth studies) and the lab for that was basically babysitting some local kids after school until their bus came to pick them up. The class was fairly easy and I had not thoughts of changing my major so I signed up to take the first part of the NC Teachers Exam. Standardized tests have always been a breeze for me and this one was no different even with the essay component. My scores came back a few weeks later and they were above average. So, I set up the hearing/speech test that was required for entry into the School of Education.

I got to the school of education and took the hearing test. It went ok. Then, they had me do the speech part. I wanted to make sure that I passed it so I tried to enunciate really well. Apparently this worked against me because, after the test, I was told that I had a lisp and would not be entered into the school of education until I went to speech therapy. I was crushed. I'd never had anyone tell me that I wasn't good enough at something before (at least not when it counted because trying out for the school play my senior year of high school really doesn't!). I was too proud to take speech therapy and, even today, I think it's ridiculous. (The State of NC is still desperately searching for teachers yet they want to deny someone based on something so stupid) No one has ever told me that they couldn't understand me when I spoke (unless I'd just woken up and was mumbling). Not in all the years of chorus in high school or during the phonetics class that I took the same year I took the hearing/speech test.

The next year, I decided to just make French my major because I was still indignant over the whole mess. However, all the luster had gone out of school for me and I just stopped going to class. I decided after going to summer school in France that year to just drop out and try working for a while.

Which is how I ended up in HR and how I ended up finishing my degree six years later but this time in Business Administration. (And, how I ended up with huge student loans *sigh*)

That's where I am right now and I still don't think I've found my niche. I keep looking at the online programs that the UNC program offers for education and I kind of keep feeling pulled in that direction (there's a business education course I've got my eye on). But, it's a lot of money to spend...again. I'm just not sure it's worth it...