Why it’s Okay To Not Use Your College Degree

Why it’s Okay To Not Use Your College Degree

When I was 10, my grandparents bought me a “teacher set” for Christmas. It came with a small blackboard, chalk, report cards, stickers, and worksheets. I was thrilled. I immediately enrolled my three younger siblings into my school and started crafting up lessons and writing exercises to teach to them. Ever since then, I knew I wanted to be a teacher when I grew up. I loved bossing my siblings around, but in reality, it was really fulfilling to teach them concepts that they hadn’t learned in school yet.

I spent 6 years working towards my teaching degree at BYU-Idaho. I had to take some time off for a knee surgery and then I decided to drop everything for two semesters and teach English in China. Knowing that my sixty 2nd and 3rd grades were getting the English language, and the opportunity to live a life above the poverty line was more fulfilling than anything I’d ever done. Watching them learn how to speak in complete sentences, communicate to me with more than just hand gestures, knowing that I had given them that left me in awe and completely humbled. I was really good at teaching and I couldn’t wait to go back to school, finish my degree and start teaching in the states.

My student teaching practicum was as perfect as it could get. I taught at the local high school with an amazingly hip and cool mentor teacher who taught me with kindness and grace. My students were fantastic and when they started showing up in my classroom just to stop and chat with me, I knew that I was doing something right. When I had my creative writing class write letters to their 10-year-old selves and read some of their deepest fears and secrets, realizing that they were trusting me with them, I knew that I was making a difference. I loved my kids and I loved being their teacher. I never thought it wouldn’t work out for me…

Read the rest of this post at Life Goals Magazine, where I contribute monthly articles and find out what happened after my student teaching practicum finished. And then tell me; do you use your college degree or did you pursue something different after finishing school?

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