College Admissions Essay: A Career As A Teacher

Throughout my K-12 education, I always knew I was going to be a teacher. It was like an instinct, as though it were preordained, it was my fate and I never questioned it. Even in elementary, I sympathized more with the teacher then I did the other students. Any classroom revolt sent me to careful observation of classroom management. A classroom success had me watching the class, as a whole, and trying to understand the victory. Today, I am nearly finished with my bachelors in English Education and I couldn’t be happier; however, the path that led me to this career was anything but straightforward. English has not always been my favorite subject. I liked reading in Elementary school, finding a thrill in ghost stories, and peace in the library.

Writing poetry came natural to me, and through my teenage years, I wrote about a poem a day. In eighth and ninth grade I took creative writing class, where I was allowed to explore my own subject matter and style. I wrote insatiably throughout this class. I imitated the ghost stories that I had been so fond of, even writing chapter books, and I delighted in personal narratives. My teacher would anonymously read student works to the entire class every Friday. We would all be enthralled with each other’s work. It was like getting a birthday present everytime my work was was selected to be read. My teacher was so impressed and supportive with my writing that she shared it with colleagues and professionals in the field of writing. She called one of my pieces genius and my heart was full of pride in my work. I knew that I would never be unglued from writing, it was stuck to me and I loved

Before I had graduated highschool, in 2011, I enrolled in Dixie College as an Elementary Education major. There was, however, a flaw in my plan, I had no interest in teaching elementary. I enjoy little kids, but being the leader of thirty of them, for seven or so hours a day, wasn’t what I intended to sign up for. At the time, Elementary Ed was the only Education program available in St. George, and I was trying to take what opportunity was offered.

Enrolling in 2011, I was a naive and inexperienced seventeen year old. I didn’t know that there was a such thing as financial aid and I anxiously paid for my tuition with a small scholarship and my own savings. My family supported me, but my parents knew less about college than I did because neither of them, nor my older brother, had been. In fact, almost no member of my mom or dad’s extended family had been near a college and nobody knew how to help me.

My first experience in college was rough: I waited in long lines a few days before school to pay my tuition to an impatient secretary, I didn’t know what academic advisors were or where to find one, and I was doing all I could to navigate this new water from information available online (and that many years ago, the website was not as accessible as it is today). All of this, and I wasn’t even in a program that interested me. Still, I tried my best to make it