Challenging.....but cool !

I never really knew what I wanted to do with my life while I was in college. I changed majors three times. I finally decided on Speech Language Pathology. This decision had a lot to do with the influence of a friend! After graduation, graduate school was next on my career path. I suddenly had this horrible pit in my stomach that told me that really was not the path to take.

So, against a lot of negative opinions of my decision, I decided to take off and go teach English in Tokyo for a year. One of the coolest years I've experienced. At the end of my contract, I realized that I absolutely loved teaching ESL. It was my new career path. I taught English in Mexico and Uganda after Tokyo. I came back to the states and started working at a private language institute teaching ESL. I now know that this is something I would like to do for a very long time, if not the rest of my life. I decided I needed to be really educated in it, although I had had a lot of experience and had taught myself along the way!

Is it a challenging experience? Of course! Is it frustrating? What career isn't? Is it rewarding? There probably aren't that many other careers out there that could be this rewarding! It pushes me and makes me think outside of the box constantly. It also opens my eyes to other cultures and languages. I think I learn just as much from my students as they are learning from me. I hope so, at least. It is a great eye opening, rewarding career. Although it took me a while to figure out that teaching ESL is what I want to do, I'm glad I waited and didn't follow through with something that wasn't really me!