42 Days...

...until I GRADUATE!!!  I know not everyone will understand but this is HUGE for me.  This is a lifetime goal that I've always held and it's been a loooong time coming.  My educational path has been non-traditional in nearly every way.  My journey has included many twisting, winding, sometimes bumpy roads.  I was definitely not the girl who graduated from high school knowing exactly what she wanted.  There was a time when, despite my knowledge that it was important, I wondered if I would ever earn my bachelor's degree.  That was actually a really big factor in my decision to go back to school at the ripe old age of 32 - the knowledge that having a four year degree was something that really mattered to me in the grand scheme of my life.

There's a song by the Avett Brothers that I really love right  now.  My favorite line says, "Decide what to be and go be it."  I love that!  It speaks to me in the deep.  The song also talks about, "...a kid with a head full of doubt" and I feel somehow that the kid is/was me.  I wish I had been able to make those decisions when I was younger and I wish (sometimes) that I had just gotten all this done years ago.  But then...if that were the case, I wouldn't be who I am and I wouldn't have had any of the rich and rewarding experience along the way either.  Those twisting, turning roads have not been bad, just long at times.  For the most part though, my former educational and career experiences have been value added to the person I've become.

I wonder what the next chapter holds?  I wonder when/where/if I will find a job?  I wonder who my future students will be?  Which of those children will have "a head full of doubt" to which I may be able to add a ray of hope?  Although it took me a long time to get to where I am and although the uncertainty of being a job-seeker in the worst economy since the Great Depression is, to say the least, daunting, I can say for sure that my decision to be a teacher was absolutely the right one.  Gone (but not forgotten) is my head full of doubt.  Although fear is definitely in the mix too, I'm now able to look ahead with pride and confidence in how far I've come.  I'm also able to look ahead with hope that I may be able to make a difference in the future by influencing the people who will live in it.