Getting to the heart of the matter:  I have a masters degree in education, and a masters in counseling psychology.    But I am not “using” my degrees.  Is there something wrong with this?  I am delivering food for Grubhub.   And I couldn’t be happier.   (Well, not true.  If I won the Powerball, that would change my life.  And I do have a plan for that, in the unlikely event that winning a jackpot of circa 100 million dollars does happen.  Stay tuned for that post.)

So yes, I could be happier do something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.  And the punch line of this joke is that “I WOULD CHANGE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.”  If I won the Powerball, I would not be delivering food for Grubhub any more.  No, that would not happen.  But I’d still be writing blog posts.  I just wouldn’t need to work for a living, so I would not be paid to blog.  [Who am I kidding. I don’t get paid for blogging right now.  In fact, I am actually paying to blog. So even though I still would be paying to blog, at least I won’t go hungry. ]

So I will continue to come back to the theme of doing something completely different than what I was trained to do, which was teach in a school, or perform counseling.  Yes I have two masters degrees.  And as the old phrase goes “you can’t take these degrees away from me.”  But there’s more to the story than this.  And this is what I want to explore in my blog.  I will tell the story of how and why I wanted to get into the fields of education and psychology in the first place, and what I encountered when I started to teach. And how I changed my mind after staying in the helping professions for some time.

Then I will delve deeper into the meaning, “what I was trained to do.” This is because, I don’t know any amount of training or preparation that could have prepared me to be successful in the field of education. I mean I could have recieved the “proper” education for the field of teaching. But I did not. I will examine what “the proper preparation” entails, and see if I recieved this education.

Did the “system” fail me? Or did I fail to “crack the code” of becoming an adequate teacher or counselor? Was it a “failing of the system” or a “failing of the consumer of the education,” namingly me? This is what I will examine in this blog. I will discuss the goals of education, and the aims of society and the “western civilization.” I will ask how does the study of the classics give someone the preparation for teaching school aged children. Or are we using the wrong assumptions that “a well rounded citizen” can teach large groups of children, or necessarily connect with troubled children and adults.

I realize this is quite a hefty topic for a blog, so I will devide the topics into smaller “sub topics” to delve into more depth, and not try to tackle all topics in just a few blog posts. This is because I want to discuss this in the “larger context,” of my life. I want to ask “how did my life prepare me for the fields of teaching and psychology. Did my life prepare me for these fields, or did my life not give me adequate preparation for these fields?

This is what I am going examine in my blog posts, and I am eagerly anticipating your feedback. I have an interesting story to tell.

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