Let Me Teach You Something
August 4, 2024
Writer: Hannah Kerlan
Editor: Gretchen Quill
“Who do you want to be when you grow up?” While I struggled when specifically tasked with answering this question on a blank sheet of paper at my senior retreat in August of 2023, my fourth-grade self would have picked up her pencil to answer with ease. Her slogans and policies consisting of pink sprinkles and cupcakes, she would eagerly state that she wished to be the President of the United States. Although, as I was approaching my first year of college and figured this assignment should be answered with something other than sweet-treat solutions, I made the hard decision to withdraw from the 2040 presidential race. With a blank sheet of paper at hand, I was forced to reconsider a question I’ve been pondering for years.
As a child, I always imagined what I would be like when I “grew up.” I wrote notes to my future self, took pictures to show my older self what I used to look like, and started several journals so I could detail what my days used to involve. The first thing I ever wanted to “grow up” to be was a doctor. But, after I passed out when someone’s dad came to our kindergarten classroom to demonstrate surgery on a teddy bear (pipe cleaner IV and all), the little stuffed animal clinic I had started in my house unfortunately had to close due to “unforeseen circumstances.” Although, as Pinterest advertises, when flowers don’t grow, you blame the environment– not the flowers! Seeing as I clearly was not the problem, outer space seemed to offer me a fresh opportunity. But, in the sixth grade, when we were given an acronym for all of the planets and asked to list them out, I blanked on what the “E” stood for… and proceeded to write “Eranus.”
At this singular point in time, with astronaut no longer in the cards, I was faced with not only answering the senior retreat question at hand, but also picking a major that supposedly aligned with that aspiration. With my paper still blank, I recalled a recent conversation with my favorite high school math teacher. Watching me struggle to select a major for my college applications, he gave me a scenario: “Imagine it’s five years into the future, and you’re the happiest you’ve ever been.. What are you doing?” he asked. To which I responded something along the lines of “living in the moment– not really worrying about the past or the future.” Yet, another question– “Why aren’t you doing that now?” Realizing the power of my teacher’s words, I turned back to my applications and confidently selected education. A good teacher doesn’t necessarily focus on giving students something to listen to, but instead focuses on giving students someone who will listen to them, knowing that a student really can do anything in the future if they support this childish perspective now. Right now, maybe I can’t be a teacher– I’m 19– but I can adopt and encourage this childish perspective myself. Maybe you have to return to what you did as a child in order to figure out what you are going to do as an adult. Afterall, the act of “growing up” should not mean abandoning what you used to love in an attempted effort to be who you want to become, and that took me a long time to realize.
Everyday since this realization, I’ve attempted to do at least one thing that would have made me happy when I was younger– when all I really knew was today, yesterday was a distant memory, and tomorrow was full of dreams as opposed to worries. I started reading before bed again, drawing, dancing when the sun came up and dreaming when the sun went down. Rediscovering the joy in the little things that I used to find plentiful. So, back to the senior retreat, what did I write? Who do I want to be when I grow up? I did not write “teacher”. Instead, I wrote the most important lesson that I have been taught and the first lesson I plan to teach. I wrote– “I hope to be a happy person, one who exists joyfully in a time that hasn’t yet been and will not be yet– in a time that is only now.”
So, this semester, as you work today on that major you picked as a supposed result of some aspiration you harbor for tomorrow, I ask of you the following: Today, do more of what you once did. Find in you more of what you once always found. So, now, my students, that concludes my first lesson, and you may be dismissed.
