Fork in the road...

With the stress of work at the moment, I think I'm becoming slightly jaded with how I'm viewing Westernized Education. There's a point when you realize that teaching is one of those occupations that can easily be classified as a 'thankless profession'. Day after day you stand up in front of a group of students who may or may not care to listen, or appreciate, what they have at hand, depending on their mood, or even the weather. You prepare these kinesthetic, visually aesthetic, song and dance type lessons, only to find a third of your students actually appreciate what you have done for them in that seemingly insignificant hour. Meanwhile, you have students in places like Ghana, Libya, Zimbabwe, just to name a few, who are happy simply to see one book to two students, rather than three or four, a chalk board with actual chalk, and a person who cares enough to stand up in front of them, day after day, and help them gain the most precious gift of all: an education.

Then again, I think there's a reason why most teachers choose to vote Democrat; it's a profession where you do not see immediate results, much like what the members of the Republican party often expect to see. Instead, education seems to be an occupation where the results of your hard work shines through 10 to 20 years down the line when, that once awkward pupil is now helping modern medicine branch off and find new ways to help those in impoverished countries, fighting in a court for the 'little guy', starting up a billion dollar cooperation that employs thousands of people during a time of an economic crisis, or even running a country.

As a side note, I think I officially found my favorite teaching quote a few weeks back: 'In teaching, you cannot see the fruit of a day's work. It is invisible and remains so, for maybe 20 years' - Jacques Barzun.

And yet, at 23, I question whether or not this is who I am. Am I experienced enough to ensure that the 'generation of tomorrow' is equipped today with the tools to properly run our country and world (it's a scary thought really...something that has, more than once, kept me up at night). Sometimes I look out the window of my classroom and think back to when I was in middle and high school. We had one day a year when people could follow around the Principal, VP, guidance counselors and a variety of other staff members. These students would dress up in suits and dresses, looking like shrunken adults, and get a taste of what it was like to run a school. Sometimes, that's what I feel like; a child playing dress-up for a day. What do I know outside of my degree and the ability to analyze a bunch of shriveled up old dead guys and gals (in all honesty, I love those shriveled up dead guys and gals...)?

Maybe, as said before, the stress of work is starting to get to me. But I still can't kick this nagging question in the back of my head: Who am I and where do I go from here?