On the Path to Becoming a Vastly Overqualified High School Spanish Teacher

I just wanted to give a short post on my recent experiences. I'm doing something totally different than the other scholars, and from most other people out there in academia. For you new scholars, I'm going to get a Ph.D.- and then teach high school Spanish.

As we speak (?), I'm typing this in my classroom at Parent-Teacher Conferences. I'm student teaching this semester, and it's AWESOME. I'm actually doing this 2-hour stint at conferences all by myself because my host teacher is at a birthing class (because obviously she's pregnant). Now that I've been here for a couple weeks- I started when they did after Christmas break and had a week less off than you all :( - I've been teaching whole classes, and I love it. I know even more now that this is what I want to do. These kids are so freaking cool, and even though I've already made my fair share of mistakes and gotten countless post-it notes from my host teacher with constructive criticism written on them, I'm having a blast. Teaching is so much work (especially with 36 9th graders in 5th hour!!!), but it is so worth it. One of my students was in the school paper this week and came to class with a copy autographed and made out to me :)

I'm also so thankful that I chose to spend these last 3.5 years at Central. My host teacher writes on all of my evaluations that I have great Spanish, and it's the first thing she says to anyone she introduces me to. I definitely attribute this to CMU's amazing and rigorous foreign language program (Jenn, you know what I'm talking about!). It makes me feel more confident in choosing grad schools to apply to, because if I could choose a school this awesome as a high schooler, I got this now. If I had the insight to choose CMU out of the 7 undergrad institutions I applied to, imagine what I can do almost four years later??? I think the same applies to all of you guys too :)

I just wanted to update you all on my path to this crazy future I've picked out, and to tell all of you that are planning to be professors (because no one else is as crazy as I am) that you're going to love it. Well, either that, or you'll want to come back to high school where the REAL fun is at :)