Last but Not Least
I'VE ALWAYS DONE EVERYTHING LATER than my friends. I was the last girl in my Beehive class to wear makeup. I didn't decide on a career until I was twenty-two. I left for my mission when I was twenty-three—nearly two years after most girls leave—and it took me nine years to finish my bachelor's degree. And so far, I haven't found anyone willing to share time and all eternity with me, placing me dead last of all my friends and former roommates on the marriage track. My life isn't where I thought it would be.
When I returned from my mission, I assumed I would soon be married and have kids. Now, eight years later, I realize I can no longer indulge in the fantasies of my twenties, when having a career didn't matter to me because I was going to end up being a wife and mother anyway. I had always been taught that the ultimate accomplishment in my life would be having a family. This was reinforced during a fast and testimony meeting, when a sister shared her hope that all her children will be married in the temple one day. Suddenly I felt like I was letting down my parents. They have that same hope, and while I know they are pleased with what I have done with my life, I feel I have failed them in some sense because I'm not married. It's not like I've chosen to not marry. I've had a couple close calls, but it's been several years since my last serious relationship.
I live in the Midwest, where LDS dating options are non-existent. Yet living two years in Salt Lake City yielded just four dates and zero boyfriends, so I tend to put little stock in arguments claiming I need a larger LDS population to find a mate. However, with my timeline for the marriage goal in complete disarray, I feel I need to accomplish something extraordinary—and soon. Currently, I teach journalism and coach the speech team at a local high school. I have had some extraordinary achievements throughout my six-year teaching career, but the achievements are intangible. So I have made more extraordinary plans to leave teaching and pursue further academic degrees full-time, write books, go on the lecture circuit, and show up as a pundit on the occasional talk show.
I know advanced degrees won't make up for not being married, but somewhere in my mind I wonder if the degrees might justify my situation—or at least assuage my discomfort. Rational thought tells me the things I hate about being single cannot be fixed with a PhD or a guest-spot on Oprah. Those accomplishments cannot sit with me at church, cannot take me to a movie Saturday night, cannot comfort me when I feel my world crashing in.
All of these thoughts about career options and the lack of a spouse led to a minor breakdown one night at dinner. “I don't know what I want to be when I grow up! If I was married, I wouldn't have to make these decisions,” I wailed. My sister stifled a chuckle, knowing that was not necessarily true. The dinner conversation reminded me of another conversation I had with my parents years ago, when I realized the music program at Brigham Young University was killing my love of music, and I didn't want to major in it anymore. But what else was there for me? I had been groomed as a musician since I was four years old, and wasn't sure I was good at anything else.
My senior-year English teacher, in a conversational journal exchange, had told me she thought I would make a wonderful English teacher. I remembered being flattered yet slightly insulted at her remark. I was not going to be just a teacher. I was destined for greatness as a performer. But later, her comment flashed in my memory as I grasped for a career change. If she thought I would be a successful teacher, then I might as well try it. At least if I tried it, I could prove how it just wasn't for me. However, the opposite happened. I enjoy teaching. I love watching kids learn a concept they didn't know before they walked in my door, and I treasure the students I've grown close to. But even with the intangible benefits that accompany teaching, part of me is still the offended senior high school student scoffing at her suggestion.
A colleague and I had lunch recently and she said she couldn't see me doing anything but teaching high school. She's right that I'm good at what I do. Perhaps I need to learn, finally, how to be content with the choices I've already made and the situations life has handed me. What's so wrong with being a teacher? I gripe all the time how teachers are not respected enough, yet I fail to give the profession respect myself. Why do I see myself as just a teacher? I chastise my sisters when they refer to themselves as just moms. “That's ridiculous!” I say. “Look at how much you are responsible for!” Why do I not cut myself the same slack? Because there is little prestige in the field of education, and I often feel like I need something more than a classroom to bring me that “extraordinary accomplishment” I feel I'm lacking. So I have built up a full-time graduate school experience in my mind, have picked my dream schools, have even told some students of my plans.
After taking two of my students to a national speech tournament, I started to feel that maybe I shouldn't leave teaching. A picture of these two kids rests on my nightstand now, as a daily reminder why I have come to love my job so much: I love my kids. Five years and hundreds of students later, I don't recall which students gave me a hard time, but I cling to memories of the students I love. I thought the senior baseball players my first year of teaching would drive me out of the profession—yet I cried when they graduated. I remember the student who asked me to attend his first endowment session and wrote me while on his mission. The students in that picture on my nightstand—I have confidence in their futures, and feel privileged to know them. They're not my biological kids, but they might as well be.
I wish it was enough.
The nagging thought rarely leaves my mind, even on my best days of teaching: “You must do something more.” The only “more” I know right now is more schooling, which will lead to more opportunities for writing, more opportunities to network with people, more opportunities to try and forget that I don't have what I want most. So I am taking the GRE and applying to a couple of schools and fellowship programs. Then I will wait for the acceptance letters, or the rejection letters, or maybe even—gasp!—a date or two, and hope I will eventually find peace in being whatever makes me most happy.
Julie is a recovering Air Force Brat currently living in Bellevue, Nebraska. She attended Brigham Young University and graduated with a BS in secondary education from the University of Nebraska-Omaha. She teaches journalistic writing and contemporary media issues, coaches the speech team, and serves as Communicative Arts Department Chair at Bellevue West High School. In her few hours of spare time, she enjoys reading, playing the piano and watching sports.
