When I Grow Up I Wanna Be...

I lost my class ring when I was 17. That girl, that 17 year old me, was arrogant, irrational, and brimming with ignorance. She knew nothing of the world, only that she wanted to experience all of it.

I’m not slamming 17 year old me. She wasn’t awesome, but she was bold, optimistic, and willing to learn.

That girl left her backwoods town and all that backwoods thinking for the grand city of Los Angeles. That girl just KNEW she was going to be famous. She just KNEW she would start her career by acting, and it would lead into a promising writing career with novels and screenplays pouring from her fingertips. She’d always been a writer. Since she was 7 years old and a children’s book author came to her school and planted the idea in her head.

That’s why, in the center of the class ring, just beneath the lavender jewel, there is a scroll of parchment and a quill. Because in the center of my being, even at age 17, I had always been a writer.

But, obviously, Los Angeles did not pan out for me. Back to the backwoods town I returned.

Suddenly, over a decade went by and I found myself exhausted, depressed, and lacking. I lacked fame, fortune, glory, pride. All the things I had set out to gain were still out of reach for me. I was a beat-down healthcare worker. I had chosen the profession because it was a sure-fire way to pay the bills. Yes, it cost me a lot of time away from home. Yes, I had to take call, and sleep in my scrubs, and spend the night in my department sleeping between scanning patients because no one else could work. Yes, I earned every single penny I worked for swimming through a sea of illnesses. I pulled 16 hour shifts, 18 hour shifts, covered in excretions, fluids, and odors of God’s great variety. I watched people die right in front of me.

I put up with that life for far too long. I settled. I worked to make money even though it cost me so much more.

This song was playing in my head the entire time I wrote this. Now it can be stuck in yours.

I had to change.

I started small. I finally straightened my teeth and began focusing on my appearance more than I’d ever allowed myself before. It was like putting down a new coat of pain on an old house. The difference was small, but set in motion bigger changes.

In February 2019, barely one month before COVID was officially recognized in the U.S., I went back to college. After dropping out of acting school and slaving away to earn my degree in radiography, I had sworn never to get into school debt ever again. But changes need to happen, and I just KNEW it was the right thing to do.

I began working toward my teaching degree, to teach high school Biology.

Surprised I didn’t do something with my writing? I’m not. I know I’ll always be a writer. I was a writer when I was 7 and wrote my first ghost story, I was a writer when I was 17 and wrote a total knock-off of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I’m a writer now. I may not be famous or rich, but I’m still a writer.

I just wanted to change the way I paid the bills.

And I got SO. MUCH. MORE.

I love science. Always have, always will. That’s why I went into X-ray instead of nursing. Science is just COOL. If you disagree, it’s because I wasn’t your science teacher.

I’m good at it, guys. So stinking good at it. I love lesson planning, finding ways to make art projects that teach science, to find online games that teach science. I really want to talk about science all day and show kids how the world around them works. I take so much joy in every little task. Even grading is interesting to me. I know the novelty will probably fade a bit as the years go on, but the passion is real and deep.

Imagine how my heart broke when I did not land the job interview.

I had been floating on the clouds when I was called to interview for this amazing teaching gig at this perfect little school. But they went in another direction and I had to pretend that I was prepared to move on, that I agreed it was for the best.

I figured this whole thing was a mistake. I had made a very expensive mistake. Now I’d have to pay bills on a degree I couldn’t get a job in. I was a waste. A teacher with no classroom. Shackled to the eternal burn-out the hospital inflicted upon me, just waiting for the inevitable back injury that was sure to come.

I even got a second job at that point. Just to have something to look forward to professionally. I began working at the Boys and Girls Club. It was a job designed for high schoolers, but I couldn’t resist the appeal of hanging out with a bunch of zany kids all day in a place stocked with amazing games and activities.

Then, out of nowhere, I get a message from a school I thought had already filled their position. They wanted an interview for their Biology opening.

I refused to get my hopes up. I barely prepared for the interview. I thought, if they hire me it will be because they like the person and teacher I am, not some lady who memorized great interview answers.

And I got the job! I clicked with the principal right away and I could tell I was a great fit for the school. Like awakening from a nightmare, I realized I was going to be exactly where I wanted to be. I wasn’t a waste. I was still on the right path.

Then, I got another message. From a complete stranger, who had found my class ring. In fact, she did not know how it came to be in her possession, but with my signature on the inside of the band, she was able to discern (Lord knows how, my handwriting is atrocious) my name and began reaching out on Facebook.

Neither of us could figure out how the ring had traveled from my 17 year old self to her jewelry box. Sixteen years of it being gone and it has found its way back to me. Me, a totally different person than I was when I last held it.

My ring has found me not famous or rich, but I am very wealthy. (Prepare for the cheese, folks). I’m wealthy because I have worked so long and hard to earn knowledge and to never stop learning new things, because I have built a family and kept my loved ones close to my heart, and I have never stopped being who I truly am. The arrogance, the insecurities, the many other adjectives are all just siding to the house. Inside that house I am me. A writer. Now, a teacher.

May I never stop.