Those Who Can't Do, Teach

I was a pretty precocious kid growing up. I learned to read when I was three, and my linguistic capabilities were miles away from my peers. It ran in the family. We were bookworms, English teachers, journalists, polyglots.

In the fifth grade I joined a drama group, and I spent my high school years with the drama club. I was such a drama queen growing up, it was the perfect outlet. As I entered my senior year, I asked myself, should I take up drama or journalism next year?

The answer came in the form of Mrs. Guevarra, my fourth year English high school teacher. She had just come back from a scholarship in Japan, and was the second person in the world that I wanted to be like when I grew up (My grandpa was the first). I thought she was so refined and elegant, with the way she walked, and how she sipped her diet Coke in can everyday on her way to class before the first bell rang.

She recognized something in me, me who was so insecure and was bullied to pieces by my schoolmates. She actually validated my existence and recognized that I actually had something to offer the world. For the first time in my life, I thought I knew what I needed to do: I needed to be a writer. It was a plan that I hatched when I was twelve, but I felt that this was the push that told me, to just do it.

So I spent four years in college pretty much immersing myself in the writing craft. It was one of the best times in my life. I may have failed algebra four times, but hey, who cared? I was there to become a writer.

Then I graduated and the real world ate me up alive. It was so cruel and brutal and mean, that I just drifted along in life, trying to become an adult. Classic quarter-life crisis.I never wanted the government journ job I was doing. I thought, maybe I'll leave after two years, which became, I'll leave when I pass my civil service exams. Two years turned into four and a half. The pay was too cushy, the hours too comfortable that I basically vegged out on life. I was just getting my journ career back on track when I met Thomas. I wanted to stay because I was going to miss my family and friends, but a part of me wanted to grow out of my skin so badly that I thought, it's now or never.

I started to learn German two years ago, and discovered that I had a knack for languages. I started to teach English on the side. It was a rough beginning, but I could honestly say that this is the most fun I have ever had working. I swear, the cockles of my heart tingle than to hear a student exclaim "Ach, so!" I get it!

The weird thing is that I am currently teaching Essay Writing, International Affairs, and Public Relations to a group of kids aged 18 to 20. These kids finished Realschule in Germany, meaning they left school at 16. They are on their final year of school, after which they would earn the German equivalent of an Associate degree. I was stupefied to learn that their teachers in school had never required a book report in their classes, nor had these kids written an essay! In my high school, we were required to turn in four essays a year!

Now that I have become Mrs. Guevarra, I take my job pretty seriously. I got pretty good feedbck from my classes. The principal said that the students have asked for more of me, could I teach all of their classes? I teach half of the four hours of English they get in a week. I am completely blown away and humbled by this. This is definitely a long way from life in Manila, but I love what I am doing right now.

My aunt in the US calls me, keeps asking me, when are you going to go back to journalism? I have a few projects tilling in my head, and I feel completely guilty for not pushing through with them. It's the Catholic in me, I guess. She has this feeling that, like her, I have abandoned my dreams to take a menial job. But to be quite honest, I don't think that that life is for me. The stress of the profession is not conducive for raising a family, which is what I want to have someday. I don't miss having to drop everything that I was doing because something is happening in some other part of the city. I don't miss the parola journalism practiced in Manila.

Is it possible to think that you have one calling, and find yourself fulfilled in another?