Where to Begin?

I guess I should start by saying that I didn't always want to be a teacher. Wait, that's not right. I always wanted to be a teacher, but I had everyone telling me that it was important to make a lot of money, and that is one thing that teachers do not do.
So I started as a Psychology major, with a focus on child psychology. I was hoping to work with teenagers, because that was the age I was when I thought my life was out of control, and all I needed then was someone who would listen.

I sat in my psych classes, and I listened to the professors, and I did well. But it wasn't fun to me. To be honest, it was boring.

I made friends with a girl in one of my classes and she asked me why I was majoring in psych, and I explained to her exactly what I just explained to all of you. Then I explained how I was considering switching to teaching, because it was in my heart, I had always dreamed of being a teacher and I loved working with kids, and teenagers.

This girl, who I barely knew at the time, looked me dead in the eye and said, "You're going to be a teacher."

I almost laughed, what did she know? We had been in the class for only a little over a week. I asked her how she knew this and she explained that my entire demeanor changed when I talked about teaching, I was more animated, and my eyes lit up.

I thought about it for the rest of the class period, and I realized that she was right. I changed my major that week to Education, the school I was going to didn't have an emphasis program, it was just the local community college so the credits you were taking didn't really count toward your certification, but each one that I took reaffirmed my desire to teach.

I soon realized that if I wanted to graduate before I turned 25, I would need to change schools. This is where the trouble began.

I was sitting on a stable 55 units at the end of my second year at community college. However, most of the public universities in California, where I am from, don't accept transfers with less than 60 units.

This discouraged me, so one night I was looking up schools in California that do accept less than 60 unit transfers when a commercial came on. It was for a school in Arizona that one of my friends had gone to but didn't like. My step dad mentioned applying there and after talking it over with them, I decided to try. My friend and I were in very different places in our lives, she was three years younger than me, and had a boyfriend waiting in California for her, I think that is why she didn't like it. (She ended up coming home and was pregnant less than four months later, but that's another story.)
I applied and got accepted, as a transfer. A lot, but not all, of my credits transferred over, so I only had to take 4 more general ed courses before I was in my major specific courses.

Now I am in my 3rd semester away from graduation and starting my Practicum hours. If you don't know what practicum hours are, don't worry. I had never heard of them either. Basically you have to observe different types of classrooms for a specific number of hours in each class. So for a Special Ed class, you have to have so many hours in an inclusive classroom, and so many hours in a self contained classroom.

That is just an example from one of the classes that I am taking this semester. I plan to use this blog to document what it is like to do practicum, what you should wear, what you may experience. I looked all over the Internet for something that told me what to expect from practicum and I couldn't find anything. Not even a YouTube video. So I decided to make it.

I hope that this is something that other Ed Majors would be interested in. Let me know if there are any specific questions that you have.

Marisa.