During my obligatory WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE OH MY GOD WHO AM I post-college quarter-life-crisis period that I am totally still in the middle of, I considered a handful of different hypothetical career options.

I have spent the better part of the last year working in education-related jobs. The question was always: “So are you planning on being a teacher?” And because I am prone to indecision, being asked that question constantly caused me start saying, “Yes.”

I have no desire to be a teacher. I love kids. I like working with kids. But I don’t want to be a teacher. I could go on forever about why I don’t want to be a teacher, but the point is that I don’t and this is a profession that will crush you if your heart isn’t it.

Today I was substituting for a class of sixth graders. I had to break up my first physical fight. I’m honestly a little surprised it took this long for it to happen.

This is Teacher Appreciation Week. After spending a year working in my local schools, I have developed new levels of appreciation for our teachers. With that in mind: please take the time to send an email or a card to a favorite teacher you had as a kid. If you’re feeling ambitious, you can bake cookies and bring them over to a local school. It doesn’t matter what, just something to let them know that you get that what they do is difficult, important, and most of all appreciated.

Since I’m obviously having such a stellar day, I was excited to come home to congratulations and my awkward face staring at me on the front of page of my internet home, 20 Something Bloggers. I was voted Featured Blogger for the month of May.

I already made a long sappy post about how much I love you guys so I’ll just link it and say, again: THANK YOU. You are wonderful, and given some of the previous featured bloggers, I know I’m in good company. Now I just have to get used to seeing me and my creepy best friend (No, not Yvonne, the other one…and Yvonne’s not creepy, she’s fabulous) plastered all over the site for the next few weeks.

I’m also going to take this opportunity to exploit the burst of traffic to promote Childhood Trauma. I’ve mentioned it already, but since you might be new here: it is a blog written by me and several other bloggers where we re-read books from our childhood and rip them to shreds for turning us into the maladjusted non-adults we are today. I will primarily be writing about the Baby-Sitters Club books, along with Nugs of That Aint Kosher. Our first BSC post is here. This is totally relevant, of course, because the other four members of the snark squad are all past recipients of the Featured Blogger title and this blog wouldn’t exist without the magic of 20sb.

This was a little short and disjointed for me. I just want to say thank you to everyone and implore everyone to go thank a teacher. Seriously.