True North

The question we are asked at even the earliest ages is quite a complex question: What do you want to be when you “grow up”?  When we’re young, we answer naively.  We want to be cowboys and pop stars.  As we get older, our answers aren’t as unreasonable, but they aren’t exactly achievable either.  I remember wanting to go to Yale or Harvard, graduating at the top of my class with a 4.0, and then becoming a litigator because according to the movie Clueless, those are the scary kind of lawyers.  Since then, I’ve wanted to be many things.  Finally after changing my major four times and taking many classes that I ended up not needing, I knew what I wanted to be when I “grew up”.  I took an Art History class my second semester here, but it took me another two semesters before I finally decided that I wanted to be an artist.  I wanted to be great.  Well, my parents weren’t too thrilled and left me with two options: pay for college myself and pay them back any money they had put toward my education, or get a teaching certificate and settle for teaching art.  So, my options of jobs that I would seriously consider applying for are an artist that owns an art gallery filled with my own works, or a teacher, preferably in high school or college, teaching people how to become what I want to be.

Now, I’m not clueless. I know that owning my own gallery and attempting to sell paintings that no one has ever heard of isn’t going to make me any money.  In fact, I would lose money.  But the thought of having a gallery in Dallas or Ft. Worth, or dare I say, New York, being right in the middle of everything, is enough to make me want it.  No artist started off making money right away; van Gough didn’t sell a painting until after his death.  But I’m not going to lie, I don’t care. I could be my own boss, set my own goals, and possibly hit it big. The job would be completely worthless, but getting the job would be a sure thing.

As for teaching, I’m not sure how I would feel about it.  I’ve been told I’m a good teacher, I’ve worked with kids in the past, and it would give me a chance to shape young minds.  But who are we kidding, it’s not what I want to do. The security is the only thing the job has going for it. I have to teach according to specific ruling, whether that be the state of Texas, or whatever private school I taught for. And where does it take me? The best I could get is “Teacher of the Year”.  Where’s the fun in that? And with the current demand for teachers being almost non-existent, it’s not even a guaranteed job.

So what am I going to attempt to be when I grow up? Well, the answer may shock you seeing how negative my previous paragraph was, but I plan on teaching.  When originally told I would have to teach, I was less than thrilled.  But having done some growing and thinking over the course of time, I’ve learned that I have more options that I thought when it comes to teaching, and it may not be so bad after all.  And I can only imagine how amazing it would be to see a student do a work modelled after one of my own.  When you add in the fact that it would give me an actual pay check, it becomes that much more appealing.

 Now I have to get there. When simply put, what I have to do is take the appropriate classes, do a semester of student teaching in a local school, take a test, and then apply for a job, which would result in obtaining a job and me spending the rest of my life happily behind a desk grading papers.  If only it were that simple.  Yes, those are the steps, but it requires much more when it’s all said and done.  I have to take a minimum of six hours of each separate type of art, and then pick two specific types and take an additional three hours in each.  Then I have to take my education classes that I have to maintain at least a B in to be allowed to enter my student teaching. After student teaching, I have to do so well on my exam to get my teaching certificate.  Once obtaining said certificate, I have to apply to multiple schools seeing as most schools aren’t looking for teachers, especially ones that teach classes that aren’t mandatory in every school. My main focus right now is making sure that with each branch of art I am introduced to that I learn everything I possible can about it. When it comes time for my education classes, I will make sure that I learn those concepts fully. These two steps will make it that much easier to obtain a job in the future.

So now you know what my future potentially holds for me.  I can only hope that I can stay with it and achieve my goals and more. Who knows, maybe as I sculpt young minds, I can find time to continue my own work and become not only “Teacher of the Year”, but the great artist that I can only dream of becoming.