The pre-career career change

I've been hesitant to write this because a certain creepy professor is likely still stalking this blog (just like he is/was on Twitter, despite being blocked… twice…) but whatever. A grad school professor requested the essay, and grad school professor > creepy not-grad-school professor.

A week before I was due to graduate from college, I realized I was on the wrong career path. It wasn't so much a realization as a personal admission, but it was bad timing either way.

What spurred the moment of truth?

A YouTube video.

This YouTube video, to be precise:

Yeah. Seriously.

I entered college to become a journalist. That desire was inspired by a fantastic high school teacher, three years of writing for my high school paper, and two years of running the paper as editor-in-chief. I accidentally enrolled myself in the newspaper class as a sophomore, but I developed a love for it.

Once I got in college, I rammed my way through the prerequisite classes for the journalism major. I intended to get my college degree in two years — tops — and jump feet-first into the profession.

One communications major, one history major, one political science minor, and one editing minor later…

There's a logical explanation for why I got sidetracked from my brilliant two-year plan. You see, I've been genetically programmed so that when someone tells me I am going to do something, I immediately do the opposite.

My friend Rachel: "You are going to love this Josh Groban song!"

Me: "It was just okay. I didn't love it."

(How long did it take me to admit that I love that song? Forever. But I totally love that song. And I was totally in that crowd when this was recorded. Whatever. Judgers.)

Like all college freshmen, I was told that I would change my major an average of 5 to 7 times. Therefore, I refused to change my major. I just added them instead.

Other people go to college and develop new and wonderful hobbies — ballroom dance, comedy clubs, intramurals . . . My second major became my hobby. For someone who has spent her life addicted to studying one period of history or another (Jamestown, Czarist Russia, World War II, the American Revolution, the settling of the West . . . you get the picture) having a history major as a college hobby was a simple extension of a natural nerdiness.

I never had any intention of using the history major for anything other than personal joy . . . until I saw that YouTube video.

There I was — seven years of official and unofficial reporting, three years of newspaper design, and a journalism internship in Washington, D.C., under my belt; just a week away from extolling the virtues of my communications degree as a speaker at graduation — and I knew I was on the wrong path.

That's a big fat oops.

I didn't make the wrong decision in pursuing journalism in college. My degree took me to Boston and Washington, and into the new and exciting world of the Adobe Suite, as well as into city government, politics, and the halls of Congress. In the end, though, all of those wonderful experiences turned out to be the college hobby, and the history degree turned out to be my real path. I knew, as soon as I finished that video, that I was meant to be a teacher.

The path to teaching would've been infinitely easier if I had admitted this to myself before my last week of college, but c'est la vie.

Now I'm in grad school, taking classes with people who have been teaching for years, and pretending to know what I'm talking about. I'm a grad school/teaching fraud, but it's working out well so far (very well, indeed, in fact) and my GPA hopes it continues.

I want to be a teacher for two reasons:

1. The world needs good teachers. Not teachers like some in my grad school classes who laugh about swearing at their students. Not teachers who aren't passionate about their subjects or start the first day of class by saying, "I hate teaching English." Not teachers who think it's a-OK and totally professional to act like a douche, threaten, and stalk former students.

(True stories, all)

2. History is the best subject in the world. Unfortunately, I always had awful or vaguely mediocre history teachers. I think I was a junior before I encountered my first good one in a concurrent enrollment class. The professor's comment on my essay planted the seed ("Have you ever thought about becoming a historian?") and fantastic college history professors cultivated it.

I'll always love journalism, and I love working in the field, but the siren call of history and the chance to help educate high school punks is stronger.

Besides, after seeing the Founding Fathers murder a OneRepublic song for the sake of early American history, who wouldn't be tempted to do something drastic?