Two weeks left

The semester ends in two weeks. Two weeks and I will have survived the first semester is how I feel now. I have a lot of work to do, but at least right now I am feeling motivated for the first time in several weeks to get my work done. Perhaps it is because I've done my pilates for ten sessions and, as they promised, I feel better. While, yes, I do feel better, somehow I don't think that is why. I think it is because I have regained a sense of direction. I spent a lot of this first semester floundering, wondering where I was going and whether this is what I really want out of life. I have decided that it is not really what I want, but closely related, and certainly not a waste of time nor of energy. I have a new goal and a new direction in mind that I think suits me better: secondary education. I want to teach at some level. This is no new thing, but I am realizing that I prefer the "innocence" of high school and undergraduate history to the analytical history of graduate school. I want to help students enjoy learning about history through creative interaction with the material, not to sit holed up in an archive for months at a time. I had a wonderful history teacher in high school who taught me to love history and to want to teach it, and I think I need to deflate my ego and dreams of glory and return to that first love of my youth, the love of a subject and desire to help others learn to love it as well. I have spent the last 6+ years of my life glad that I was out of high school, but I think I realize now that what I really need is to go back.