Attention to everyone chasing their dreams

My wife and I are both teachers, and the kids keep saying they want to be teachers. Every time, I tell them I'll do everything I can to stop them. There was a student teacher doing observations, and on her first day she told me her goal was to get you out of teaching. But this silly guy ended up getting a teaching job anyway...

My high school cooking teacher (who was a creative writing teacher before that, and an English teacher before that) once spent a whole week telling us about his life. At the end, he said, "So there I was at a crossroads. Go to art college and get an art degree, or give up all my hopes and dreams, move back home, and become a teacher." Some idiot in the back raised his hand and asked, "So what did you do?"

So someone who hates their job is going to teach young kids while saying they hate it? Teacher pay is low, I'll give you that, but you either don't understand the situation or you're an idiot, or you're pretending to work and pretending to care... Yeah, your parents raised you wrong too, by the way... You're going to raise young kids but pretend to hate it? Pathetic.

There's a big difference between hating your job and thinking that choice is a bad one. I tell people who want to start a PhD not to do it. A PhD should only be pursued by people passionate enough that they couldn't stop even if they tried, and those people don't quit no matter what anyone says. If I can talk someone out of it, they shouldn't have been doing it in the first place. Teaching is the same way: you should only go into it when you really can't see yourself doing anything else. It's a calling, and the pay is about what you'd expect for a calling. If you have the talent to teach in America, you could probably do something else and make twice as much.

My mom is a retired teacher and my dad was an engineer. Turns out that's a really common combination. At the state engineering university in my town, they even held a "mixer" event for engineering students and education students.