So I am always cautious of myself when a great new career idea comes to my mind. I try not to let myself get too excited about the possibilities and I try to be fairly rational about the whole thing. What will be best for me? Could I really move across the country from my family? Would I be able to find a job in the field at all? If not, does my major afford me any back up options? Would I still enjoy it 30 years from now? Most of these questions are hard to answer without any experience with them.
My latest idea, though, is something that I believe would leave me with enough options to thoroughly look into it. So what exactly is it that has drawn my attention away from an English teaching major (again)?
It really started as a result of conversations that I have had with my favorite junior high English teacher and my favorite high school English teacher while I've visited them this year. The thing is, the more they tell me about their difficulties with the administration and the students who really just don't seem to care, the more I think that I wouldn't like being a teacher in the long run. I think I would be passionate about it in the beginning and I probably would love most of the students that I taught. The problem that I have seen, though, is that it does not take much, after a long enough time in the industry, for the job to lose its worth.
That very thought has been in my mind for a few months now. The solution, some other career that I could be passionate about for a much longer amount of time, was what I was lacking. Rediscovering an old dream was what got me set on this new plan. Being a book editor at a publishing company is something that I have daydreamed about since I was 12 years old and my sister, Wendy, and I would talk about how much we loved reading and writing. Who knows if she remembers or not, but we used to talk about how we both wanted to go into publishing. As I grew up, though, I was struck with the reality of just how many of the children who dream about becoming a book editor actually really do.
Really, though, how many of those kids still really want to publish books above all else by the time they're in college? Even more importantly, how many of those college students actually leave their home states in order to join the field that they've been dreaming about? How many of them decide to stay home, close to their families, in a career that they know they can break into more easily?
I'm hoping that my logic here isn't completely wrong... I started researching possibilities today. I've even begun a plan. Most of the high profile publishing companies in New York offer summer internships for college students. I'm going to start putting money away so that by the time I'm a junior I can honestly afford to start applying to spend the summer of 2014 in New York at whatever company accepts me.
That's my new plan. As of today, I'm planning on changing my major to English with a minor in Communications. I'm going to start making a list of books to read and I'm going to spend a lot more of my time reading. I really, really want this. Maybe I'll even find a way to do it while living in Utah. However, for now, I'm not going to let those kinds of things hold me back. I think it's time for me to really look into a new dream. I've been so focused on becoming a teacher for so long that I haven't really thought about anything else that interested me because I thought there was no way I could do it. But I can. And I will.
