English squee post.
I want to be a teacher so I can do for others what my best teachers have always done for me -- make me feel respected, intelligent, worthwhile, and loved. I swear that five minutes in office hours with Professor Picciotto (the by-now infamous Milton professor) was enough to make me feel like I'm on the right track in my life -- that I'm where I'm meant to be. On some days I'm not so sure I could make it as a college professor, but on other days, as I walk down the stairs of Wheeler, high on the combined power of written words and conversational discovery, I know that this is what my life's about. This is where my heart is. This is what gets me excited, what makes me think, what I feel the most myself about. This is where I can be the best kind of me that I know. And if I can become a professor with half Picciotto's skill for engaging in real dialectic learning alongside students, and for overflowing with enthusiasm for her subject, I'll have succeeded in something so beyond myself and my ability to understand it.