a cosmic april fool's joke

Years ago, I had a pretty good idea of where I wanted to be in life by the time I hit 30. Well, 30 has since come and gone and I can honestly say that I'm nowhere close to where I thought I'd be when I was 20. At 20, I was sure, that by now I'd be married, own a house, have kids, have a job that I loved and that paid well. I'm zero for five.

I decided during my freshman year that teaching was what I was going to major in. Originally I had wanted to go into advertising but. after taking a few business classes I knew that there was no way that I could withstand four years of exceedingly dry material. Having volunteered in my little brothers' kindergarten classroom during winter break, I decided that education was a better choice.

Oddly enough, I'm now working toward an MBA, so I guess I've come full circle.

After a few years of teaching, I came to realize that the buzz phrases that were used in college 'hands on learning', 'student involvement', 'creating lifelong learners through engaging lessons' were just that...buzz phrases. Most schools adhere pretty firmly to the notion that 'children should be seen and not heard' and most of the teachers that I worked with felt this way too. Students quietly in rows working on ditto sheets was the norm, not the exception. To me, this has always been the equivalent of death by boredom, both from a teachers perspective and a students as well. I was more interested in getting them excited while they were learning. Needless to say, I didn't fit into the system all that well. It took me nine years to do what I should have done long ago. I left.

In a way, I suppose it's better that I don't have a wife and kids at this point. It's easy to pick up the pieces of your life, throw them on the ground and then start trying to put them back together in a more interesting arrangement than they were in before when you're single. Never could I have done this with family. See? Here's my silver lining.

So where do you go when nothing seems to be leading you in any direction? And just how old do you have to get before you figure out what you want to be when you grow up?