So I think I've made it clear that I'm a Lancasterite, if not by my choice of undergraduate school, by my love for apples and markets and rural autumns. This past weekend was homecoming at F&M, a chance to return to my dear friends and my dear little city, and a chance to share my Penn experience with the people who knew me before my stint in Philadelphia began!
You know those moments when people ask you how your life is, and you sort of have no idea how you should answer or even how you're going to answer, and then something just comes out and you realize that you just spoke the truth? Maybe that doesn't happen to everyone, but it happened to me many times this past weekend. As everyone and their mother asked me, "How's Penn?" and "How's graduate school?" and "How's Philadelphia?," I started having answers.
Answer Number One: Penn is good--hard but good. My professors rock, and that makes it all worth it.
Answer Number Two: Graduate school is different from college. I don't have time for some of my favorite things, like singing and piano playing, but I'm going to try to improve my balancing act because life without singing is preeeeetty worthless.
Answer Number Three: Philadelphia is cool--vibrant and busy, and sometimes a little scary, but always boasting a million things to do! It's not Lancaster, but it's Philadelphia, and it's home for now. And being close to my family is great!
So those answers pretty much just "came out" (to my great relief!), but then there was the follow-up question. You know...the big one. The one that sits up there on a level with, "So where have you decided to go to college?" and "Do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?"
"So, Sarah...what do you want to do with your life?"
Seriously? I come back to Lancaster hoping to revert to my youthful, professionally-confused state, and instead I'm hit with THE QUESTION. By approximately everyone who talks to me! To my dismay, the answer didn't quite fly from my mouth like the others. It did, however, make me think a little harder about the question, and the truth is...I think the classroom is calling me. And "calling" might be an understatement. I don't know yet if it's a classroom of seventh graders in Costa Rica, or a classroom of teachers seeking to teach better, or a classroom of college students wanting to learn about the meaning of liberal arts education, but I know it's a classroom. And for a girl who loves college and loves every chance to make a face light up in excitement, there's no place that I love more!
By the time the weekend was over, I had my answer ready.
Person #5,429: "So, Sarah, what do you want to do with your life?"
Sarah: "I want to make people happy and share love and have a job where every day is unique...so teaching it is!"
Funny how going home is the best way to discover where we'll journey next!
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