living the (teacher) dream

i distinctly remember being VERY upset and defensive whenever the following conversation took place.

some person: "what're you doing at Uni?"
me: "english".
some person: "ah right. what you gonna do with that then? be a teacher?"
me (internally): no fuck you arsehole! i'm gonna do something glamorous and amazingly exciting, not teach little shits Shakespeare!

so yeah, stuff changes, you grow up! nothing glamorous or amazing magically turns up and you start to consider teaching (usual reasons; job satisfaction, security, holidays and so on...) sounds like a simple formula. except it's not really that simple.

i was ill a few weeks back, and my friend (who is quite the spiritualist), said to me "i hope you're feeling better soon - pay attention to your dreams when you're ill, they're important.light and love xxx". i took heed of this because bizarrely enough, it was only a couple of nights before this that i'd had the teacher dream. in it, i was an english teacher at my old high school. i'd never considered senior teaching before so this was a revelation in itself. i absolutely loved it. it was a brilliant dream and i woke up thinking 'oh my god! i need to teach!'

obviously though, you cannot 'live a dream'. such a concept doesn't exist, even if you're a rock star. there are downsides to everything, and whatever life you end up with becomes normal to you. living a dream is a con. so i was suspicious of how wonderful everything was in the dream. i was doing all sorts of creative stuff with the teenagers, which is probably unrealistic when you have so much ground to cover and so many exams to prepare for.

but let's not be negative, looking into teaching is actually borne of much more complex reasoning than the old stability/fall-back route reasons. it's all tied up with my new philosophy on life (see 'to the zen dog' for further information!) it's seeing life as a journey - living it, but not really expecting to 'get anywhere' as such. understanding life's impermanency so nothing is forever. feeling free to change the course of events if need be (i'm young, free and single! woo hoo!) obviously, this course of action is hugely influenced by my belief in education for education's sake (a brilliant philosophy hammered home by my mum many times over).

it's to do with wanting to put something back into the community and share my own passions. it's also related to other things i may like to do in the future, such as creative writing in the community/something community arts related. i'm slightly concerned about the targets and testing culture in schools, which i'm not sure i would get along with. however, perhaps once qualified i could look into alternative methods of schooling? i don't know much about it right now, but the montessori/steiner waldorf schools seem to have an interesting viewpoint on education.

hmm ... what to do with my life? that old chestnut! it's all good, i think things are moving slowly in the right direction. just one day at a time and always enjoying the ride! "when i let go of who i am, i become what i might be". wise words, whoever said them.