Last Author Standing: Apple
okay... so... I meant to get this in to last_author for last week's challenge... but I didn't... soo... ta-da!
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At one point, Nicole had wanted to be a teacher. She had wanted to see the spark in children’s eyes when they finally got it-got whatever lesson it was they were trying to learn. And, when she entered college, she was an elementary education major, because that’s what she thought she really wanted to do.
But… when she got into the first semester of course work… (intro to education? A joke. Service learning? Talk about a headache). She loved the kids. Whenever she went in to the after school program at the elementary school, talking to and helping the kids made her day. They loved the attention (something they probably didn’t get at home or in overcrowded classrooms), and she loved giving it to them.
It was the teachers, though, that turned her off teaching. They were so… mean, bitter, negative. They’d yell at the kids for being, well, eight, and they’d “take away” privileges they never intended on giving. Nicole didn’t want that. She didn’t want to be jaded, not by children.
So, after a semester of classes that would do her no good, Nicole switched majors.
Now, instead of teaching about books and colors and shapes, she was learning about books. All about books. Old books, new books, classic books, books with short stories and social commentaries. And writing essays-one thousand words, two thousand… now do an honors thesis! There was no more teaching handwriting, or the art of cursive. Nope, she would now sit in front of a computer, Times New Roman font staring back at her, mocking her half done attempts at explaining imagery. An English major. What does someone do with an English major?
’Teach,’ she thought bitterly. ’People teach with an English major.’
At least now, though, it wasn’t the kids making her jaded. No… it was the lousy world with a nonexistent job market and no conceivable options that were scraping away at her rose-colored glasses, tainting their hue with dirt and muck, exposing the world for what it was and then plunging the image into what it is deep down inside.
Eventually, her undergrad whittled away to three-hour blocks of boredom. Graduate school loomed in the future, laughing at her pathetic credentials. But she got in… met a girl. Fell in love with a girl. Planned a life around a shared future with her. Got a job at a newspaper, writing feature stories (more like the prose her major had prepared her for). Learned how to shorten her paragraphs, dumb down her words (jadedness seeping in at how they had to write on a fourth grade level), picked up a beat job for the city council (they needed someone who didn’t care about partisan politics, and Nicole was apathetic enough to be unbiased).
She was happy enough. Danielle helped clean off the glasses, making the world seem better.
Although, being happy enough didn’t stop the occasional dream of a small, shy child nervously offering an apple as a job-well-done-positive-impact gesture…
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At one point, Nicole had wanted to be a teacher. She had wanted to see the spark in children’s eyes when they finally got it-got whatever lesson it was they were trying to learn. And, when she entered college, she was an elementary education major, because that’s what she thought she really wanted to do.
But… when she got into the first semester of course work… (intro to education? A joke. Service learning? Talk about a headache). She loved the kids. Whenever she went in to the after school program at the elementary school, talking to and helping the kids made her day. They loved the attention (something they probably didn’t get at home or in overcrowded classrooms), and she loved giving it to them.
It was the teachers, though, that turned her off teaching. They were so… mean, bitter, negative. They’d yell at the kids for being, well, eight, and they’d “take away” privileges they never intended on giving. Nicole didn’t want that. She didn’t want to be jaded, not by children.
So, after a semester of classes that would do her no good, Nicole switched majors.
Now, instead of teaching about books and colors and shapes, she was learning about books. All about books. Old books, new books, classic books, books with short stories and social commentaries. And writing essays-one thousand words, two thousand… now do an honors thesis! There was no more teaching handwriting, or the art of cursive. Nope, she would now sit in front of a computer, Times New Roman font staring back at her, mocking her half done attempts at explaining imagery. An English major. What does someone do with an English major?
’Teach,’ she thought bitterly. ’People teach with an English major.’
At least now, though, it wasn’t the kids making her jaded. No… it was the lousy world with a nonexistent job market and no conceivable options that were scraping away at her rose-colored glasses, tainting their hue with dirt and muck, exposing the world for what it was and then plunging the image into what it is deep down inside.
Eventually, her undergrad whittled away to three-hour blocks of boredom. Graduate school loomed in the future, laughing at her pathetic credentials. But she got in… met a girl. Fell in love with a girl. Planned a life around a shared future with her. Got a job at a newspaper, writing feature stories (more like the prose her major had prepared her for). Learned how to shorten her paragraphs, dumb down her words (jadedness seeping in at how they had to write on a fourth grade level), picked up a beat job for the city council (they needed someone who didn’t care about partisan politics, and Nicole was apathetic enough to be unbiased).
She was happy enough. Danielle helped clean off the glasses, making the world seem better.
Although, being happy enough didn’t stop the occasional dream of a small, shy child nervously offering an apple as a job-well-done-positive-impact gesture…