I have decided I want to become a Secondary English Teacher. I chose this career because I want to have a positive impact on children, especially when they need it. I have worked hard to get where I am. I have worked hard in school and skills I need for the future. Because I worked so hard, I have a lot of experience and skills for my future. During High School, I worked very hard to keep my grades high. I also took on extra work to learn more about subjects and for extra credit. I took multiple extracurriculars and took on work in those. I joined Art Club, Band, Yearbook, and National Honor Society. In Art Club, I took on the role of president and I strongly led the group through many projects. In band, I played the flute, and I helped my band director prepare for concerts and created slide shows for each concert. In Yearbook Club, I helped to prepare pages in the yearbook to hand out to students at the end of the year. In National Honor Society, I was required to serve 20 volunteer hours each year. From my hard work, I learned skills like leadership, creativity, communication, patience, and confidence. To prepare for my career, I have also babysat, job shadowed and applied for college. I had to babysit my little cousins as I was growing up. I learned how to cook, clean, and how to keep calm in difficult situations. I learned how to calm children down and how to keep them entertained. I learned that children act in different ways, and some behave better than others. I job shadowed my second-grade teacher when I was in sixth grade, and I helped her teach a lesson. I saw how she set up her lesson plans and how she would use time management. I learned how to speak to children and how to act in front of them. I also recently applied for college and start my first semester in the fall. Beginning college is one step closer to reaching my goal of teaching. I will be able to student teach and get to make my own lesson plans. I get to use every skill that I learned to help me get great grades on my teaching abilities. After I finish college, and finally get to become a teacher, I want to use all the skills have learned to create positive impacts on my students. I want to teach them the best way I can. I want to set a good example on them and inspire them to become the best versions of themselves.

"Will I spend all the rest of my years wishing I could go back?" This lyric from Olivia Rodrigo captures the essence of my adolescence. Growing up I have made so many mistakes and regrets. I feel like I have wasted my years of childhood being "wise beyond my years." I also feel confused with relationships. Relationships between friends, family, and significant others. I have also spent so much time trying to figure out who I am. I have spent so much time doing all of these things that I feel like I will have so much regret when I am older and wish I could go back to fix everything. I wish I could have had a longer childhood like my other friends and family members. I have had to mature at a very young age so I could take care of my family. I was blessed with a baby brother at the age of five and I loved to try and care for him. Being only five I could not do much, but as I got older, I had to take care of him more. I also had to take care of my younger cousins and begin babysitting when I was 10. Because I was babysitting at such a young age, I had to mature too soon, and I have so many regrets. Looking back on my life as an 18-year-old, I wish I would have spent more time being a child. As I keep growing older, I still wonder, "Will I spend all the rest of my years wishing I could go back?" Relationships have not been an easy thing for me to keep. I struggle trying to balance time between everyone. At times I have pushed family away to be with friends or a significant other, pushed friends away to be with a significant other, and pushed friends and significant others away to be with my family. I was never able to balance time, and I still struggle with balancing. After losing family members, I regret not spending more time with them. I wish I could go back and be with them more. I have also lost many friends because of my confusion. I know I will keep doing this and I still wonder, "Will I spend all the rest of my years wishing I could go back?" I have also had a difficult time trying to figure out who I am meant to be. I have been through many different phases and regret a lot of them. I have spent time focusing on only myself and not paying attention to others. I have also shut myself away from the world and spent time alone laying in my bed. I have spent too much time caring for others and not caring for myself. I still am struggling to figure out who I am, and I hope I can figure it out soon. As I get older, I keep reflecting on my adolescence. I have done great things, and I have done things I regret. "Will I spend all the rest of my years wishing I could go back?" I am still dwelling on that lyric, and I know I will continue reflecting on my life. There are times now, that I would go back and redo.

I have always wanted to become a teacher since I was young. As a child, I would always chose to play a game of school. I would play the teacher and my cousins would play the role of students. I would pass out pieces of paper and teach them basic math and how to spell. Growing up, my career choice has never changed. Throughout my school years, I have had some incredible teachers. My teachers have impacted my life for the better and pushed me to become a better person. Because of my teachers, I want to have an impact on kids just like they had on me. I want to be able to teach my students what is best for them and help them make good choices. I want to teach them new things and expand their mindset. I want to set them on a path to be great and I want them to feel like they accomplished something at the end of the school year. My family has always been one of the main reasons that I push myself so hard. I am the oldest child in my family and I want to set a good example for my younger sibling. In school, I would push myself to learn as much as I could. I would go to teachers for help in my subjects to make sure my work was perfect. My teachers would usually ask me to help the other students with work when I was finished. My family has always been proud of my work and they hang all of my grades and projects on the refrigerator. It was an honor to be added to the refrigerator and I want to continue to make my family proud.

Growing up, I was always the one my family called for babysitting. I grew up raising and spending a lot of time with my cousins. I have babysat them for years and I have watched them grow from babies to teenagers. I feel like babysitting them was more of an honor than a task. Their parents chose me to babysit them instead of my other cousins or hiring a nanny. I would wake up early in the morning and stay late at night babysitting. I love to help them with homework and play simple games with them. I feel like I can owe my love for taking care of children to my high school art teacher. My art teacher has always been my mentor and best friend. In 2020 when everything shut down because of COVID, I was so nervous to return back to school the following year. I never wanted to be in school and I could not finish a full day at school. In 10th grade we were able to choose extracurricular activities. I chose to take an art class because I have always had a love for art. I started to become close with my art teacher and I started to like being in school. My art class was one of my last classes of the day, so I felt like I had to stay all day, so I could go to my art class. Without that art class, I do not think I would be where I am today. I continued taking art classes throughout high school. My teacher was always so glad to see me when I came to her art room. I always feel welcomed in her room. My art teacher is one of the sweetest people I have ever met. She is so nice to everyone she meets. She always gives the best advice to students and other teachers. She has given me so much great advice that I use daily. Every time I see her I feel so grateful to have met her and I am so thankful for her. My art teacher has had such an impact on my life and I want to do the same for my students. I want to be the reason they confidently go to school. I want them to feel like they have a safe space in my room and I want to give them advice when they need it. I want to be able to teach them well, so they are able to learn new things and expand their mindset.

As I enter my first years of Marywood University, I look forward to my future. Throughout my time at Marywood, I will be majoring in Secondary English Education. With my English degree, I know I will have to take a lot of time to read and comprehend books. Throughout Elementary School and the beginning of my High School, I never really enjoyed reading. The selections my teachers gave me never sparked my interest. My English classes were always my least favorite class and I never had a good grade in them. I never enjoyed my English classes until I reached eleventh grade. In eleventh grade, I started to look forward to my English class everyday and it was one of my highest grades. Although we did not read as much in that class, we still learned a lot about the Language Arts and how to make our writing sound persuasive. As I entered my Senior year of High School, I expected it to be just like my Junior year. My Senior year class was mainly reading. We read many books in that class including Sherlock Holmes, Alice in Wonderland, Beowulf, Macbeth, Brave New World, and many more. I really enjoyed that class and I feel like I gained so much knowledge. I became involved with the books and I easily answered questions about them. I really enjoyed how my teacher set up the reading. She would start the book by reading it to us and we would continue reading on our own. Each day we would discuss what occured in each chapter. For Macbeth, my teacher had us all choose parts in the play and read our parts out loud. I really loved being able to act out the scenes and I felt like it became easier for me to understand. Because of that class, I decided to teach Secondary school. I would love for my students to have the same experience I did. With the knowledge of reading, I hope to share that knowledge with my future students. I want reading to be an important factor of my class. I would love to share a book with my class and have them enjoy it. I want my students to be able to understand the books and be able to find deeper meanings. I want my students to be able to relate to books and make connections. I want my students to be able to read the books out loud in class and act out scenes. Reading has become a very important aspect of my life. I hope I can get the opportunity to be able to share my love for reading to students and inspire students to read more.

As a child, I would always tell everyone that I want to become a teacher. As I grew up, I can confidently that I am going to become a teacher. Throughout my years at school, I have had such wonderful teachers that have impacted me. One teacher always stood out to me as I entered my high school years. In 2020 when everything shut down because of COVID, I was so nervous to return back to school the following year. I never wanted to be in school and I could not finish a full day at school. In 10th grade we were able to choose extracurricular activities. I chose to take an art class because I have always had a love for art. I started to become close with my art teacher and I started to like being in school. The art class was one of my last classes of the day, so I felt like I had to stay all day so I could go to my art class. Without that art class, I do not think I would be where I am today. I continued taking art classes throughout high school. During my senior year of high school, I was in the art room for most of the day. I took two art classes that year. I would try to finish my work early in my core classes to be able to go to the art room during that class. My teacher was always so glad to see me when I came to her art room. I always feel welcomed in her room and I feel like that is a very important factor. I do not think I would have wanted to go to the art room so often is she was not as sweet. My art teacher is one of the sweetest people I have ever met. She is so nice to everyone she meets. I have never seen her get mad at anyone and she always gives the best advice to students and other teachers. She has always told me secretly that I am her favorite student, but I know she tells everyone that. I joined the art club that she runs and I was elected president. I spent as much time as possible with her at the high school and I felt so honored. Every time I see her I feel so grateful to have met her and I am so thankful for her. I feel even more grateful that she had asked me to work for her at an art studio and I have been working with her for a year now. If anyone ever asks me why I have decided to become a teacher and how I made it this far, I would tell them about my wonderful art teacher.