Dear
19-year-old self,
You just finished up your second
year of college. Guess what, now time for you to enter your major. You will
work hard and grow. This next year will also be one of your toughest in the
personal aspect. Survival is key. After getting through junior year of college,
then you will be faced with conquering senior year and student teaching. Again,
a lot of changes with your personal life that is beyond your control. I promise
you will get through everything and become a stronger person. Just continue to
work hard. Remember, Student Teacher will be tough as well. During so, you will
grow as a person and become so much better at management. You will know more
about the content and feel slightly more comfortable about standing in front of
the class feeding them information (only slightly though, this is still
terrifying as ever). However, while Student Teaching, you will need to learn to
balance school, class, and work in an effective way. This is meaning that you
need to get done everything in a timely manner. Do not wait! Know that the one
thing you don’t wait on to do will be the one thing that something bad happens
to so turn things in early! You should never doubt yourself or your
capabilities! That will be a partial downfall. There are life factors that will
come into play, like realizing teaching anytime soon may not be for you. This
is the hardest realization. Once you figure this out, you will feel better. So
maybe try to realize this sooner and continue working hard. Remember, you have
great support around you within the program, use it! Sometimes you forget that
you have that. Your program will do anything they can to help you feel secure.
It will help you understand your realization and will continue to support you.
This program will also help you to grown in your content knowledge as well as
teaching knowledge. Use it all wisely! Implement those things you learned, you
are allowed to do so. Overall, everything in the program will do you justice
and you won’t want to anything to be changed. You will do just fine your final
2 years. Work hard, gain knowledge, use said knowledge, and don’t give up.
Although teaching may not be for you at this time or you may not want to teach
at the secondary level, you will gain valuable information to apply for when
you decide to teach!
Hang
in there,
Almost
Graduated Sheila
