My standard line when I saw someone’s face contort when they learned I taught middle school:

It’s much easier to teach middle school than it is to be a middle schooler.

And, from what I can tell, it is also often easier to teach teenagers than it is to parent them. (e.g. I poured out my heart and smiles and best effort to my favorite teachers . . . and reserved my sulky moods for the ‘rents.)

Alisa, it sounds like you’ve got a lot of great possibilities for your future life plans. Good luck figuring it all out!

I’m also a second-guesser, but I don’t think I’ve second-guessed this decision once, which is strange. The further I get on this path, the more right it feels. It’s a nice feeling.

jessawhy, that does sound like a big course change. And there’s always a risk when you start something new that you won’t like it. But I always tell myself that if I start something and don’t like it, I can go do something else–there’s nothing holding you to a decision.

Naismith, your family sounds similar to my own. Take my sister Vada (hi!), for example, who double majored in Computer Science and Anthropology, thought about doing grad school in Graphic Design, and is now working on getting her first fiction novel published.

abby, you’re definitely right that young people can have a lot of idealism and energy, and that’s one of the exciting things about teaching them!

I still entertain the idea of getting a PhD in the future, but can’t decide for sure what to pursue: Early Modernism (the most obvious choice), gender studies, or clinical psychology. Any way, it won’t be for awhile. But, I’ve found that for me personally I appreciate education with more life experience–I could get so much more out of a BA program now that I’m 10 years older and wiser than when I first went through. I see myself returning for that PhD sometime in middle age, when my (yet unborn) kids are older and my finances are more stable. I expect to understand the liberal arts differently at that time in my life, and I’m excited to see how my perspective changes from now.

I really like Pres. Faust’s metaphor of how a woman’s life is a song, and we sing different verses, but we don’t sing all verses at the same time. Good luck to you!

Mark IV, I love the story about Elder Oaks and being open to big life changes.

I often find decisions like this incredibly difficult. It can take me a long time to make them, and then a still longer time to quit second-guessing myself. Some very few decisions in my life have been based on crystal-clear spiritual experiences, but most of the time I get, at most, a general impression and then have to muddle through based on my own limited wisdom.

My brother (in his 40s) just graduated with a BS in computer science. Prior to that he was an assistant to an artist and a restaurant sous chef.

My sister is an RN who also worked as a travel agent and now works as an educational administrator.

My sister with a doctorate in linguistics taught college for some years, and then switched to technical writing for high-tech companies.

So on my side of the family, all of us have diverse career interests. This is very hard to explain to my husband’s side, in which dad and both sons have degrees in the same field and have always worked in that field.