The Road Not Taken...

I was doing a bit of random musing with Bon yesterday and it sort of hit me just how far reaching and influential the decisions we make can be. For example, there were at least four major turning points in my primary and high school life when I could have decided to change schools. In three of those cases, I decided to stick with the school I was at, despite being told that I was giving up "a golden opportunity" to test my limits in a more challenging setting. But that's me, I suppose. A wuss who is afraid of the unknown.

However, it is because of the decisions I have made in the past that I am where I am now (yeh, that's a pretty 'duh' kinda thing to say, I'll admit). Unlike Robert Frost's poem, I tend to take the road which is more travelled upon because the commonsensical me hates uncertainty.

Sometimes I think that my decision to choose teaching as an occupation is probably just another extension of this wussy me. School is an institution that every person knows well and having not had the chance or the means to experience anything else, I probably subconsciously decided that teaching was as 'safe' a choice as any.

However, I'd rather think of my choice as being at least partially fuelled by my desire to continue learning Japanese at uni since I'd continued my studies throughout high school. Teaching seemed like the logical choice since my parents refused to believe any of my justifications as to why studying a single Bachelor of Arts degree at uni would be an excellent idea.

If I had not decided to stay on at Danebank in year six, I doubt I would have developed such an interest for Japanese in years seven and eight and therefore not have thrown myself completely into my distance learning studies in years eleven and twelve (see? Remember what I said about decisions and their far reaching impacts?).

Even then, I had not really contemplated becoming a Japanese teacher as I was under the impression that I wasn't good enough in Japanese to teach it at a high school level. It was only when my distance learning teacher (bless her socks) suggested that I could study to be a Japanese teacher that the possibility really popped into my head.

Then there's the whole thing about my Chinese studies. If I had not chosen to teach secondary school that fateful uni enrolment day when I chose my majors and minors without really knowing what I was particularly doing (damn you, uni admin people!), I probably wouldn't have picked up Chinese at uni and pushed myself as hard as I have in learning the language, almost from scratch, in order to be confident enough to teach a high school class in my 3rd/4th year of uni.

Call it God's grand master plan or fait accompli, it's always interesting to look back and mark out the path of decisions that got you where you are today. Funny how everything sort of falls in place over time...although reading Frost's poem makes me want to do something spontaneous like...actually, I can't come up with anything spontaneous to do at the spur of the moment. Maybe I'm not one for spontaneity after all...

***

The Road Not Taken
By Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.

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**Edit**...Ok, well THAT veered completely off course! This turned into a reflection post about choosing teaching when I really wanted to post about something else entirely. Ah well...behold! My digression prowess!