A Teaching Experience

I wrote the following post of Friday afternoon, then forgot to publish it. Sorry for the lag.

I'm sitting at my office computer right now. My desk is completely cleared off, and the walls are bare. The sign declaring me Erin Wolcott, Equine Instructor, is no longer hanging on my door. It's the last day of the spring semester at this little community college in the middle of nowhere, Colorado. Tomorrow is graduation, and after that, my contract will be fulfilled and I'll be free to move on with my life.

I was talking to one of the administrators here this morning. She thanked me for being here this year, and said she hoped it had been a good experience. This really got me thinking, and inspired this post.

This job has definitely been an experience. I would say I'm a little impetuous sometimes. That's "acting or done quickly and without thought or care." I just looked it up on dictionary.com just to make sure I had the right word. I took this job quickly, and without enough thought or care. It had been a few months since I'd had a job, and I was beginning to feel a little desperate and a lot useless. 

So I became an instructor at a community college. At least I was going to be teaching the same subject in which I earned my own degree, at a university, I might add. But still. Me? Teaching? I get so nervous speaking in front of groups of people for any reason. I start breathing rapidly and at odd places in the middle of my sort of intelligible sentences while my face and neck and chest start turning bright red... you get the idea. 

But they offered me the job, and I accepted. I drove all of my stuff here from Oklahoma, rented an adorable green house right next to a little park, and declared myself a teacher. 

I quickly got over my fear of public speaking. I feel confident in standing up in front of a group and talking about just about anything at this point. Even if I don't really know much about the subject matter of my speech. I can wing it. I can throw out around some impressive vocabulary and hope that my audience doesn't catch on that I'm totally full of crap. 

I have no idea what my students thought about my overall knowledge of equine sciences. I do know that I know a whole lot more about it now than I did at the beginning of this school year. That old saying about the best way to learn something is to teach it to someone else is really true! I know all kinds of things now about horses that I missed in my undergrad and hands-on experiences and education. I have no idea how this new knowledge will benefit me in any way in the future, but maybe it'll come in handy for a trivia game someday! 

It was interesting getting to know my 15 students. Their backgrounds, their reasons for being here, and their dreams for the future were all over the map. I'm definitely going to miss a few that were always good for a laugh. They kept me on my game, and improved my patience enormously.  

My coworkers were from all walks of life, too. I'm only sorry that I didn't connect or become better friends with any of them. 

I'm going to do my best to be a better friend to those around me going forward. Everyone is going through something painful at any given time, and we could all use more friendly faces in our day-to-day lives. I want to be the person that sits right next to someone sitting all alone and strikes up a conversation. But I digress.   

Ultimately, I'm not sure that teaching is for me. I'm still not sure that I have a dream job or a major career goal at all. I've got a few part-time jobs lined up for the summer, and then I'm going to fly by the seat of my pants and figure something out once I move overseas in September. I think it might be fun to become a dog walker, or maybe a barista! ;)  

Last day in my office!