Welcome to college, students!

I'm going to tell you how I got here. It was not (at all) a straight shoot.

I wanted to be a teacher way back in the day. When kindergarten finished, I wept  because I was so disappointed there was a summer break. I always loved school and my teachers; I remember the excitement of learning to read, mastering cursive, and studying art. I wanted to be like those teachers, but somewhere in elementary school I decided I wanted to be a orthodontist instead, probably because my mom complained about the cost of my crooked teeth all the time.

In high school teaching became my plan again. I got a large scholarship/loan to study education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, but it was one of those scholarship/loans that gives you money and then you have to give four years of your life teaching to the state of North Carolina--beware: money with strings attached is always dangerous. I didn't think anything of that when I accepted the scholarship at age 18.

In college, I spent my junior year in Montpellier, France and it changed my life. I saw all of Europe, read critical theory, began to understand history, and my entire world expanded. I came home and entered the UNC School of Education and dropped out within a month. I changed my major to Cultural Studies, promptly lost my teaching scholarship/loan, infuriated my parents, and had to pay back the State of North Carolina $15,000 from the three years I had taken the teaching scholarship money. But--believe it or not--it was worth it.

Because that's when I became engaged in my education. I created my own interdisciplinary major within the Program of Cultural Studies--I took classes in the Art Department, African American Studies, and Communication Studies Departments. I graduated with Honors and went on to teach photography and writing in the Durham Public Schools (through an Americorps program called Public Allies) with the Literacy Through Photography Program at Duke's Center for Documentary Studies. Then I decided that I wanted to be a real classroom teacher (not the cool, fun arts lady) and I moved to New York in 1999 where I was told you could get a teaching job if you were simply breathing. I became a New York City Teaching Fellow in 2000 and yes, after all that back and forth, I taught middle and high school for 11 years before coming to Guttman Community College in August of 2011.

I tell you this peripatetic story because somewhere, deep in your gut, you might know what it is you're meant to do, but someone/something is telling you to pursue something else. I don't regret anything I did, but I do laugh at the irony of it all. I knew I was meant to teach, but it took many schools, degrees, travels, friends, lovers, cities, jobs, trials, debt, and joys to finally land me where I should be.

Stay true to yourself and eventually you will land where you should be. Be open. Be curious. Be passionate. And take all of this--school, jobs, relationships--seriously. It's your life, after all. Live it.