I originally went to university to be a high school Spanish teacher.

I loved my high school Spanish classes. I loved learning how a different language’s sounds and words could harmonize together. I felt like a different person while speaking Spanish – prettier, cooler, and smarter.

I also longed to travel and live abroad.

During my third year of university, a teacher suggested that maybe I shouldn’t become a teacher after all.

This news was heartbreaking, but looking back with hindsight, I realize that this comment was necessary for me to change my goals and create an incredible life abroad.

I recall during that university course when I stood outside the library before a presentation that I barely contributed to due to my anxiety and self-doubt. I stood outside the building shaking and questioning everything.

There is so much I want to say to that girl.

And so, I will say so here in this letter to my past self about the decision she’s going to make, and the life it will give her.

A letter to my younger self.

Dear me,

I see you standing outside the library in a purple dress. You are shaking against the brick wall. You want someone to take away your anxiety and self-doubt. If your own teacher in this course doesn’t believe you should be a teacher, what was all the dreaming of being a Spanish teacher for? Was it all in vain?

Over the next few months, going to change your major from Secondary Education-Spanish Teaching, to Spanish Language and Literature, and English with a Concentration in Linguistics. You don’t know what linguistics is yet, but in a few months, you will.

You’re going to feel scared at first, like your life is in limbo. You’d known since you were 15 that you wanted to be a Spanish teacher. You’d told everyone. And now, you’re about to free fall into the unknown.

There’s a quote I’ve heard all over the Internet for years: leap, and the net will appear.

You have to realize that there are many ways to be a teacher, and being in the classroom as a lead teacher is not the only one. In fact, it’s not meant for you. You’re a free spirit, even though you feel terrified half of the time. You want to explore and call your own shots, and you won’t be able to do that as easily if you’re a traditional classroom teacher.

That comment that the teacher said about how you maybe shouldn’t go into teaching will turn out to be a blessing. You just won’t know it until years later.

You will take a beginner linguistics course the following semester and fall in love with it. You will feel so excited to learn about the intricacies of language. You will learn about how people actually learn languages. And you will learn that there are opportunities to be an ESL teacher overseas. You’ll get to teach and travel.

And, perhaps out of a 21-year-old spite, you say to yourself, You don’t think I’ll be a good teacher? Just you wait. One day, I’m going to be a university teacher.

And lo and behold, that will be your first job right out of college – and in Villavicencio, Colombia. And it will be so hard. And you will grow so much.

You will get burned out from teaching in a traditional classroom, so after 3.5 years, you will return to Michigan, ready to throw in the towel. And yet, you know you want to go abroad again. You will take a chance on teaching business English in Madrid. And you will love this opportunity.

A pandemic will happen.

You’ll lose all your work.

And, out of needing to survive, you will start to teach online.

This will change the game for you.

Online teaching will give you a teaching environment that does not drain you like in-person teaching does. You’ll get to be creative. You’ll get to teach students from all over the world. And you’ll get asked to be a teacher trainer, and this will change your life. You’ll be the guide for teachers you wish you had when you started teaching.

And you won’t believe this – you’ll get not one, but three Master’s degrees related to teaching, and start your own business.

Something you didn’t even know was possible.

So, as you stand against the brick walls outside the library, have hope that you will get through this presentation. You will change your major, but you will still be a teacher – in a way that works out even better for you.

Have faith, my friend. You’ve got this.