Like all kids, I changed my 'goal career' many times. For a while I wanted to be an aeronautical engineer, then a writer, then a mathematician. When I started high school, I had my first taste of tutoring, and it felt right. For the next few years, I was sure I wanted to be a teacher. I entered college intending to major in Computer Science and Math, and to get my Master's in Education afterwards.
Naturally, that's changed. I've now switched from Computer Science to Political Science, and am considering dropping Math. I've also grown increasingly unsure that teaching is what I really want to do. Part of this, no doubt, is because I haven't done any teaching in a long time, even to the extent of helping someone with his/her homework. And perhaps this will change when I start helping my mom review Trig, as she'll be teaching it soon. But my interest in politics has been steadily growing over the last two or three years, and it's increasingly become a part of my life.
I'm starting to think that maybe I'd be happier working in politics than teaching. Of course, I'd never be an elected official; too many skeletons in my closet, I speak very poorly in public, and I'm not even a theist, let alone Christian. But I love analyzing elections and polls more than almost anything else; I recently posted a comment in an open thread about Indiana's relative swing from 2004 to 2008, and I really enjoyed discovering that it had its own shift twelve percent to the left.
I know that I don't have to decide what I'm going to do for a few years yet, considering that I doubt I'll be able to graduate in fewer than four more semesters, but I used to be sure that I wanted to teach, and now that's not really true. Maybe I will become a teacher, but somehow I think I'll be frustrated, not being able to share my opinions very freely with my students or my co-workers. Then again, is working for a campaign likely to have many opportunities for teaching? I enjoy them both, but I think I will have to choose. And right now, I don't know which one I want. That, more than changing from teaching, which I had as my goal (as an informed goal, no less) for a good while, makes me uneasy.