Youthful Arrogance = Adult Disappointment

*sigh* I'm not in a good place.

I feel like I am well and truly up shit creek without the proverbial paddle.

Things aren't going according to plan A and I don't have a plan B.

Worse I've no idea WHERE to even look for a plan B, or any alternative plan for that matter.

I know I need advice and some help but I don't know where to look or who to ask. The places and people I've tried have been about as helpful as a chocolate fire guard.

The advert made it look so easy with their catchy statement 'Those that can teach"

I want to teach. I want to be a teacher.

Six years ago, during my undergraduate degree, I took a module titled 'Children and Language' At the time I didn't have any particular interest in children or babies, and I was finding the Linguistic part of my degree hard. The Children and Language module spoke to my curiosity though, it called to my imagination and I LOVED every minute of it. I was totally awed and knocked off my feet by how children acquire language.

It amazed me. I got goose bumps, the hair on my head felt like it was standing on end - and not because I just hadn't brushed it that morning - and my stomach literally flipped with the awesomeness of it. I knew there and then that I wanted to be a part of that learning, I wanted to help and play an active role in furthering their pursuit of knowledge.

School wasn't fun for me. I didn't particularly like learning - it has always felt like some kind of test that I feel like I am failing - but that doesn't mean that I'm not passionate about it though. And if I'm honest I don't think it was the learning that I didn't like but more the environment ... my teachers weren't great, one regularly used ritual humiliation and fear as a teaching mechanism. Not conducive to learning or to inciting a person to want to remain in education.

Perhaps it is too idealistic of me but I really do believe that if you can create enthusiasm in children about school and learning, if you can speak to and capture their imagination when they are young enough...may be, just may be we will have more going on to college and university. May be, just may be they won't end like me...going back as an adult and finding it soul destroying to be falling down at so many obstacles.

Better still may be they will have got it right the first time and won't find themselves in my situation; really wanting to be something and not having thought about being anything else only to discover its not going to happen.

Hopefully they won't have to learn the hard way like me that youthful arrogance = adult disappointment.