I just need to be upset for a while.

So here’s the deal.

I want to be a teacher.  I have doubts sometimes at my skill or devotion, but as I go through more schooling, as I spend more time in classrooms, I really realize that this is what I want to do.

Last Wednesday we had one of our graduate students in my Young Adult Lit class give a presentation that was essentially about how hard it is to change the books that you’re teaching to students, and how rarely it happens.  She detailed the procedures most schools have to go through to replace/drop/add books to the reading list for a year, and how it sometimes takes years.

She brought up how in those years you could (and probably will, at this rate) lose your job because a referendum doesn’t pass, or enrollment drops, or the school simply realizes that they don’t need you.

After her presentation, she opened up to questions in general.  There are 2 graduate students in our class, and the rest of us are fresh-faced undergrads who haven’t taught in a real classroom yet.  The first question was about whether or not it’s true that you don’t really get to have a life outside of teaching.

She said something along the lines of "Kind of."

If you’re coaching a sport, often you are waking up at 4 in the morning to be to school early to get things ready, and you stay a few hours late for practice.  You go to bed at 7.30 at night because you’re so physically and mentally drained from everything you’re trying to do.  And then you get up the next day and do it all over again.

If your’e not coaching a sport, you’re seriously putting yourself in danger of being fired because if they can get fewer people to do more jobs, they absolutely will.

Jessa personally was the adviser for an after school book club, so she wasn’t TOO stressed – but yes, she often felt completely drained by 8.30 at night.  She said that the lesson she learned was to NEVER bring school home with her.  She did everything she needed to at school so that she could have some kind of separation in her life.

Then someone asked if she got a job right away when she graduated.

Now, I don’t know anyone my age/who doesn’t already have tenure who HAS a teaching job right now.  I have officially figured out that I won’t get a job right after graduating.  I’m trying to weigh my options and see if it’d be better to just go to grad school right way, or maybe even go into law school like I wanted to.  But I don’t really know.

Jessa, as a matter of fact, did get a job right way – but that’s because she sent out upwards of 40 resumes out across the state.  Out of those, she got 6 interviews.  Out of those interviews, she was offered ONE job.

She didn’t care where she went , she just wanted a job.  We all have to be able to do that or we won’t get a job.

Only Nathan JUST pulled some "Someday I might get a job somewhere and have to leave and then we won’t be together anymore" bullcrap, so I know that if I have to go somewhere he doesn’t want to go/can’t get a job, he won’t come with me.

So what, choose a job or Nathan?  Continue waiting tables the rest of my life just so that I can be with Nathan?  I don’t know if I can do that.  I hate what I have to do to make money.  I hate getting hit on by creepy old men and not being able to do anything about it, I hate how much my body aches every day now even though I’m barely 22.

After class, I kept talking with Jessa for a while, and she advised us to keep going to school.  I don’t know if anyone else has noticed, but tuition goes up EVERY YEAR.  I’m already over $17,000 in debt, and I haven’t paid for the next 2 semesters yet, and that’s just my undergrad.  My parents don’t have money to help me, they gave it all to my screw-up siblings already.  I’m not exactly going into a lucrative field here.  I will not be able to pay off these massive loans (which have been accruing interest while I’ve been in school, by the way) on the kind of money I’ll be making waiting tables, or even teaching.

I started crying while I walked home, and I didn’t stop for over an hour, even with Nathan trying to calm me down.

I have no effing options.

I won’t be able to get a job without moving across the country somewhere.

If I DO get a job, I won’t be able to teach anything I’d actually like to teach, and if I try, chances are I’ll lose my job for rocking the boat.

Besides that, as soon as they need to fire someone, I’ll be one of the poor saps on the bottom rung of the ladder and the first one to go.

My alternatives are be a waitress for the rest of my life or be a student for the rest of my life and live under the massive weight of my student loans.

I hate everything about my situation right now.  I can’t BELIEVE that this recession touched the education system – you’d think parents would WANT their kids to become educated so that THEY could find the few jobs that are out there, but no, they’d rather buy their fucking SUVs and computers for themselves, not thinking about the future at all.

When these parents are old and depend on these kids, I hope they SUFFER TERRIBLY.  I hope the leaders of this country and this world completely fuck them over for everything they’ve done, because they’re UNEDUCATED IDIOTS.

Okay, maybe not really, cause they’ll screw me over too.  But I wish I could fix this world.  I want so much to do something about this.  Not just for me, but for the kids that are getting taught by teachers who still believe that the moon landing was faked, or that the best way to teach history is to leave out the bits that make America look like a giant dick, or English teachers that don’t think ethnic authors should be in the canon.

This is what has been on my mind for a week.

This is why you might see me suddenly just start CRYING for no reason.  I can’t handle knowing that this is what I get for wanting to do something good with my life.