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As a kid, I had a lot of things I wanted to be "when I grow up," some silly, some realistic. Interestingly enough, some of them are still dreams of mine.
Hairstylist: I had this mirror with different light settings and I would set it up with every comb, brush, hairthing, etc I owned. I would do the hair of anyone who let me (of course no cutting). I even put blue dye in a jar of water to look like barbicide. As I got older, I did up dos for several of my friends for homecoming/prom. I highlight my little brother's hair. Sometimes I still think about it...
Ballerina/Professional Dancer: Of course, dancing as a child, who didn't dream of wearing those beautiful pointe shoes and being the Sugar Plum Fairy in the Nutcracker? After one of my favorite teachers moved away, I tried dancing at a couple other studios, but I couldn't find a teacher and studio that I liked. My mom convinced me to do poms in middle school and I picked up on the tap again when I did 42nd Street in high school. I took a bunch of dance classes in college, tap included, which is definitely my favorite. Oh to be a Broadway chorus girl...still a dream.
Teacher: I had one of those teaching kits when I was about 10. I even recruited 5 kids my brother's age (4 years younger) in the neighborhood and we made our own school, where I was the teacher, of course. Apparently I was the only one who liked school that much.
Teaching was something I had thought about for much of my high school and college career, because I really enjoyed biology in high school and I was always helping my friends with it. My parents didn't think that I should go into teaching because they thought I was "too smart" and it would be a "waste".
I declared my major going into Maryland as general biology and decided I would figure out the rest later. I don't know if it was my own stupidity or bad advising, but I added secondary education after my second semester sophomore year, and I feel like I missed something. I ended up dropping education as a major right before graduation because I felt like it was not for me. When it came time to lesson planning and managing a classroom, I felt completely clueless, whereas everyone else seemed to know what they were doing.
I took a methods class in the fall of my junior year where we observed for a half day once a week at a nearby middle school. I was under the impression that our mentor teachers would be familiar with having college students observe and help teach and work with us to have us plan and teach some of the lessons. My experience was a complete farce. First off, my mentor teacher couldn't handle the rambunctious kids herself, so she was no example to me as to how to manage a classroom. Secondly, she had no idea why I was there, so all I did was sit behind the desk, grade worksheets (and fix her mistakes), and watch her struggle to teach the kids something. I taught one whopping lesson, that I didn't even plan, for about 2 minutes, how to use a triple beam balance. I think I realized at the end of that semester just how far behind I was from everyone else in my class. The teacher who taught the methods class didn't exactly explain expectations to us, so I feel like I went the whole semester not knowing what I was supposed to get out of the class and out of my observations.
Maryland has this graduate program that is one year where students have a full time teaching position. I totally flunked the interview, but I didn't even care that I didn't get in, because I had sworn off teaching by then.
Since I have a biology degree, I've taken the Praxis I and II, I have all the education classes UMD requires except for one, I know the county could hire me to teach biology. I just don't feel prepared to be a teacher. My mom has suggested subbing for a while, but I don't think it would be a representation of what it is like to be a teacher.
So, now that I am "grown up" I am still figuring out what I want to do with my life, because I can't keep living under my parents' roof working this bullshit part time job that high schoolers can do.
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MARYLAND
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