Transitions

FINALLY. . .I am getting to the interview questions that SisterCDR kindly sent me.  (I did delete an entire and brilliantly-conceived answer by accident, but that's only  a partial excuse.)  On to the first question: 

1) Lawyer, teacher, potential minister (even if the idea of more education now is daunting). These are some serious life transitions.  Did you feel them coming a long time before you took action, and did you know what the next phase would be before it happened or did you just know a change was taking place?

The transition from college student to law student to lawyer was a pretty standard one.  Like many people in my Vietnam/Watergate generation, I went off to law school with the idea that it would enable me to "make a contribution" to the world.  By the time I was studying for the bar three years later, I was thoroughly indoctrinated for the corporate track, but I was also volunteering in a museum of natural history education center, and knew that I wanted something other than the high-powered career I was about to spend the next several years pursuing.  But I couldn't figure out how to "escape."  The other day I was talking with a physician who has recently turned in her lab coat for mom-at-home clothes, and we agreed that, while the years leading up to a decision of that magnitude are agonizing, the only question left after it's made is, "What took me so long?"  

My museum work convinced me that I wanted to be a science educator, and eventually I bit the bullet and went back to school.  The denouement came with chemistry, a subject I had never studied and for which I have no affinity whatever.  I tried three times and eventually had to conclude that a portion of my brain is simply missing and that a scientific career was not in the cards for me.  I practiced law a bit more and, after I switched to staying home with my kids, finished up the work for my teacher license -- in English and History, NOT in zoology or biology.  

It was another decade before I became a teacher, however.  Contrary to what the media might have you believe, the educational world is not waiting with baited breath for people with advanced degrees and experience in other fields to enter the classroom.  We cost too much and we are no longer "malleable" 22-year-olds. For years I ran my own law practice and occasionally taught in a community college before a fulltime teaching opportunity fell out of the sky and into my lap.  

As far as another change -- I doubt it, but you never know.  I deeply love teaching, and 50-somethings with three kids in college and old age looming on the horizon have a great many financial obligations.  I have received a lot of encouragment to think about a ministerial career, but I am ancient enough to see that most of it comes from people who, however loving and well-meaning, are not walking in my shoes.  My guess is that I will continue to teach, although perhaps someday in a different setting, and that I will continue to do ministry in the form of writing and continued service to the local and wider church.  The master's I'm working on is in Humanities with a focus on Church and Culture: Middles Ages to Present, and there's plenty for me to do as an educator with that material!