FMF time! Better late than never, right?

This week’s word:

Kate wasn’t joking when she said we were going deep this week!

Here we go:

I get asked all the time if I regret quitting teaching when I did. 

“Will you go back?”

“Are you sure you don’t want to teach?”

“Maybe you were just with the wrong age group.”

“You’re such a good teacher! Maybe it was just a bad experience?”

“Maybe you just needed a break!” (I believed this one for awhile).

“You should try again.”

And every time I nod along politely, but in my mind and my heart I know this to be true: I do not regret not becoming a teacher. 

I don’t regret it one bit. 

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Do I regret the timing? Absolutely. Who wants to discover their one dream wasn’t what you expected it to be the last semester of college and be forced to complete a bonus semester of classes they didn’t want? Not me!

Do I regret not figuring it out sooner? Yes. I should’ve seen the signs much, much earlier. Though I was enjoying the practicums I’d done leading up to student teaching, it was still so stressful and overwhelming for me each and every time I got in front of a classroom that I should have realized I wouldn’t be able to handle it long-term. But I was stubborn and naive and determined to not let this dream go, mainly because I didn’t have another dream or career to fall back on.

(time’s up here, but I ain’t done. Sorry Kate!).

Do I regret not working with kids? Mostly. I love kids, I love working with them, but I am such a people pleaser that teaching students was hard because it’s hard to please kids when you’re trying to teach them. There’s no pleasing involved when you’re making them write essays and take tests. I miss it, though. I miss working with students. I started tutoring a few weeks ago, and it made me realize just how much I love working with kids, but the 1-on-1 aspect of tutoring is much easier than trying to make a whole mess of kids happy.

I’ve considered other careers that will have me working with kids (librarian is the one I’m leaning to most), but teaching them is NOT one thing I miss!

Do I regret not having a clue what to do next? Yep. I put all my eggs in one basket: teaching. All my ‘internships’ were education-based, all my skills are things I learned in my education classes. So to graduate with an English degree, but only having education experience was hard– though I have skills in editing and writing, I don’t have the internships or credentials on paper to back them up. I just have my education work, which will only help me find a job in education, it seems.

Even when I graduated and got an internship at a place– guess what I did? Teach. I taught reading. Because that’s all I’m good at, apparently. I pigeonholed myself even further.

So, yes, I regret a lot about my decision and the circumstances that followed. I’m still unsure what my next steps are 2 years after the fact, and have no idea what my next dream or goal or career step is. It’s a hard place to be. 

But I do know this: I can regret all the above things all day long, but I will NOT regret my decision to not become a teacher. Share on X

I was nearing a mental breakdown if I kept going the way I was– and if that was what student teaching was like, how was I going to handle my own classroom? I wasn’t. I wasn’t going to be able to handle a classroom on my own. I know the answer to that question now.

This decision has caused a lot of questioning, uncertainty, grief, and struggle in my life. But staying would have cost me so much more. So I won't regret it. Share on X

It’s caused a lot of heartache and struggle, but so much good has come from it too. 

I have no time to regret it– I’m too busy trying to figure out what my future’s going to look like, what the next dream God has for me is.

this post was inspired by the words of this song:

“I see should have beens, could have beens

Written all over your face

Wrong turns, and bridges burned

Things you want to change

It’s history

You can’t rewrite it

You’re not meant to be trapped inside it

Every tear brought you here

Every sorrow gathered

It’s history

But every mile mattered”

 

Every tear, every shoulda been or coulda been brought me to where God has called me. Nichole's right: every mile mattered. Even if they led me nowhere I wanted to be, they led me to where I needed to be. Share on X