yes. i. can. (right?)

remember in my last post when i said that i am pretty amazing at avoiding anything that involves risk and failure? yeah. about that...

so...teaching scares me. freaks me out. that's why i refused to pursue the field for so many years. it is also why i finally decided to pursue it; i realized that the very thing i feared was the very thing i wanted to do more than anything. the latter won out over the fear.

while i'm excited to teach and think about it night and day, i'm still, admittingly, scared of what will happen when i enter my first classroom. i have nightmares a couple times a week about my first day of teaching. i dream that kids beat me up. i dream that kids run away. i dream that i can't find the classroom in which i need to be teaching in and the bell has already rung. i have yet to have a dream where i'm a spitting image of erin gruwell.

i know these dreams and fears are unrealistic, at least in the grandiose way that they are portrayed during my REM cycles. but the nervousness still ebbs and flows in the pit of my stomach.

tonight i gave two presentations in my curriculum design class. i felt good. i felt confident. and it went well. in fact, the professor came up afterwards and sincerely complimented me on what i had delivered. "you're already a great teacher," she said, enthusiastically yet casually. little did she know that i needed to hear those five words more than anything else in the whole world.

i can do it. i will do it. and i'll be good, damnit.