The Present.

At the present moment, I am standing in my classroom, surrounded by desks and poems I had my students memorize (villanelles, specifically). Some high school students might think it stupid. Some may think it a waste of time. Some may think it to be fun. Whatever they thought, it doesn’t matter because I’ve realized that teaching high school English is more than just teaching English. It’s teaching them to think about characters in literature that aren’t so different to our lives now; it is teaching them parts of life that they may not get taught anywhere else. It’s also teaching them basic communication skills, really.

There’s nothing quite like the feeling of knowing you are in the right place in your life. So many people I’ve met and known work at jobs because they like it and it pays the bills. It is very rarely that I hear someone say they are working their dream job, and they wouldn’t trade it for the world.

I know I’m only a first-year high school teacher, but I know my passion for this job will never die. Because people told me that my first year was going to be difficult, and it is, but they would say it in a way like I didn’t know what was coming to me, and I might be tempted to give up. But I’ve felt no such temptation. They would say “It’s difficult,” in that tone where they dismissed me as naive.

But I’m here, and this is my dream, though I have many dreams to come true still.

I can’t say much about other aspects of my life—I’m not rich by any means, I’m still finishing grad school, and my love life is kind of on the back burner. But I can say that my career is exactly where I want it to be, and has even exceeded my expectations. That must count for something, right?

I hope you have a dream still, and though it may seem so far like Gatsby’s green light (oh man, what an over-discussed topic that I absolutely cannot read another essay about), I can tell you that it comes slowly, then all at once, and at the most unexpected time.