Contemplations on the whole college thing.

Could it be? Two posts in one week? Will the Glamorous One be back to stay? Will I ever stop asking bizarre rhetorical questions? Only time shall tell. . .

Now that I've got almost a whole semester of college behind me, I feel like I can be contemplative on the whole process. I was thinking last night about all the hassle that friends of mine went through back when we were 21 and 22, them trying to decided where they wanted to start sending their resumes, me a mother of two working full-time at a job that I am still not entirely sold on. Both of the friends I was thinking of went into teaching. Both of them are STILL in school. They took a couple of years off to secure jobs, but are now in grad school, one trying to do it with her husband in grad school as well and a baby due any day now. The other doing it at a more convenient time, having come out of a marriage to an uber-ass that essentially cheated on her after a little under a month (yes MONTH) of marital bliss. So, I get what they are doing, and they get what I am doing.

The thing that scares me the most is that the things I thought daunting the first time I was in college (what if I don't get accepted to the Education program? How do I write a two page essay about why I want to do what I want to do? Am I organized enough to structure an entire day for kids that aren't mine? Am I PATIENT enough to deal with a room full of 20(+?) kids that are not mine?), are even more so now. Because I, like, care and stuff. I care that if I don't succeed at this, I'm wasting precious money that could have instead gone for my KIDS' college experience. I worry that I'm being selfish because there is going to come a time where this takes time away from my kids. I worry that they will resent the fact that I went back to school. Add these on top of the previous worries, and if I don't center myself, I'll drive myself crazy. So when I get those feelings of incompetency, I remind myself that I am doing really well right now. And that I know I am supposed to be a teacher. I know that I can connect with kids on a level that not a lot of people can (I contribute that mostly to the fact that I am horrendously immature and refuse to change). I KNOW that I can make a difference. I just don't always know that I can do what it takes to get to that point.

Another thing that I find interesting is how quickly I fell back into old habits. It didn't take me very long to remember how to ramble along in a paper to finally make it make some sense. Nor did it take me long to remember how to pick out the important pieces of a book without having to read every single page of it. Am I cheating myself? Maybe. But I'm also trying to break myself of it, which is why I'm glad that the classes I'm taking right now are Freshman/Sophomore level classes. They aren't as in-depth as the classes that are coming will probably be.

I'm looking at applying for the Education program at least by Spring semester, and if not then, for sure by Fall of 2009. That means I really only have 3 years to do this. To force myself to grow up in some ways, but still hold on to that "thing" that helps kids who have not the best parents come to me and be so excited to tell me that they lost a tooth (he's a little boy in Diva's class. Problem child extrordinnaire, but him and I clicked the last time they went on a field trip). And sometimes THAT's what scares me the most.