it's a scary thing.

So I am almost 23 years old. I am in graduate school. And I don't know what I want to do with my life. It's a scary thing.

The past year or so I've been debating about whether or not I really wanted to be a teacher. Whether or not my passion lies there. Whether or not that's what God wants me to be doing with my life. I've kept that all in until recently.

August 10 started my internship. I'm at a Title I elementary school in 1st grade. I'm with a great mentor teacher. I love the first grade team I'm working with. I've enjoyed getting to know the rest of the staff. The kids are too bad either :]. But the more I'm there, the more I don't think I should be. That passion isn't there and it terrifies me. I don't have any desire to do lesson plans the rest of my life! The students just started school this past Monday, so the first week was all staff meetings. Don't even get me started on those. I don't desire to work in the school systems. At all. Wow. And I just spent 4 years working towards that. Since May I've been in class and working on my thesis, and I'm just wishing I would have done student teaching just to get it all over with.

What scares me most is I have no idea what else I would do. But here's the thing. I still want to own/direct my own preschool one day. And I even would love to do preschool right now. I know that is definitely still teaching, but it's not in the school system. It gives you plenty of more le-way with working with things and different ideas. Yes, it still has it's regulations, but it's different. That's what I've always wanted to do. And what's great, is I can do that with my degree. But I almost feel like it's narrowing my options. But if it's what I really want to do, then is that bad?

And what really really frustrates me are these classes. For those of you who don't know, we (interns) were in staff meetings for a week, with our kids for a day and a half, then pulled out to take two-four hour long classes for a week. Okay, for one, if the first two weeks are the most important, WHY are you taking us OUT!? Yes, I know what I said about being there, but how can I try to enjoy it if I'm not? And for two, all the work. I am NOT trying to be lazy, but let me tell you what we have to do, for one class, we have a five-page paper that's due every Saturday for each chapter covered, which totals eight. Yes, that's right, that's forty pages. Okay, that's not too bad since it's every Saturday. Next class, we have a 10 page research paper, a board game, a video, 2 journal reviews (three pages each), some states project thing, and I believe there's something else as well. These two class-work assignments are spread out from now until December. And on top of this is our internship which we do daily journals, a weekly report, a weekly schedule, and lesson plans for anything we teach. Oh yeah, and I work part-time off campus. And I can't not work. It's just really frustrating.

So that's my heart on the line.