Alright. So a lot of my close friends and family know this already, but I am totally scary when someone puts me in front of a person who either isn't sure what to do with their life, doesn't know how to get started in school, what classes to take, how to get a degree, what universities are right for them, the list goes on and on. I will sit down with someone for hours and make someone really think.
EVERYONE- okay not everyone, but A LOT of people have told me they don't see me teaching kids. They don' see me teaching elementary, middle school, or high school. And I can understand how they see that. To me it just made sense. I want to help people. I want to make a difference in people's lives. I want to do that without being involved in the medical field. I love social studies. So teaching social studies just made the most sense in my head- not so much in anyone else's.
Last Summer, I sat down with two of my best friends from high school, who also go to KCC, separately and helped them develop plans. During Winter break, I helped one of them make a plan to graduate with a degree and we brainstormed ideas on what he could do with the degree. Last month, I was sitting in a car riding home after helping a high school junior think about college, the importance of ACTs, and a bunch of other common knowledge, but also universities, future planning, made him a comparison chart, and had him take career quizzes, and other fun stuff. The student's mother turned to me and said "Why are you going for education when you were BORN to do what you just did with my son?" Okay. Maybe not EXACTLY those words, but pretty darn close. And I sat there. And I thought. And I thought some more. And I went online. Then I put it aside. Last week, a girl came up to me at KCC and said "Help me, PLEASE." So I sat down with her and she now has a serious plan. The motivation I saw in her eyes was an amazing feeling for me. I did that. And a few days later a new plan was developed.
Most everyone on the planet knows this already, but just for the fun of saying it again, I am going to The Pennsylvania State University in the Fall of 2014. Original Plan: Go. Get my secondary education social studies degree. Go teach secondary education. New Plan: Go. Major in secondary education social studies. Minor in communications. Get my bachelors. Go back. Get a masters degree in higher education with a minor in psychology (NOTE: Psychology and communications may be switched around). Graduate with masters. Have a job lined up in an advising office or as a professor (dream would be both) and go to said job. Study, slowly, for doctorate in leadership in education. Graduate with doctorate. Be department head. Live my dream of advising and also be a professor, hopefully in History, because I love history.
I know a lot of you are thinking that I am crazy. There is no way I could ever possibly do that. If you are thinking that, then you haven't been around me when either A. I am helping a student, B. I am talking about helping a student, or C. talking about history. Words cannot explain the feeling I got when "what about becoming an academic advisor?" entered my brain. It was seriously just so... eye opening. I am more driven than I have ever been before. I am more passionate than I have ever been before.
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