My Thoughts, by Eva Beck (almost 17)

Ever since I could remember I have wanted to become a teacher. I wanted to make a difference like teachers have done for me. I have teachers that I think about a lot because of the impact they had on me. A lot of my friends don’t have these core memories of teachers like I do. I am so lucky that I do and am still able to keep in contact with a lot of my old teachers, though some of that contact has been lost and I wish I had retained those connections. A few of these teachers that have made a big impact are my 2nd, 5th and 6th grade teachers, my 7th grade English teacher and my 8th grade social studies teacher. They have all pushed my passion for teaching. I still actively email my 2nd grade teacher as we have the same birthday and just the pure immense impact she made on my young mind; some of these teachers I wish I still had connections to, like my 6th grade teacher, and some I wish I could break laws of physics to keep that connection like my 8th grade social studies teacher. All of these teachers still push me to become a teacher and I am actively taking steps to become a teacher like them. I have started to work with kids, especially young kids, the age where joy, hope and endless happiness is all that comes across their little minds.

I have loved every minute of it, Every Minute, but as I grew older, I learned about how our world works. I fear for those carefree joyful minds. I worry about the world they will come to know. I am scared if their endless hopefulness finds the bottom. If I already have less rights than the women that came before me, then what rights will the little 5 year old girl who ran to give me a hug or the 7 year old girl who refused to leave my side have? I am scared of the world I will teach in. What will my future students’ world look like? What about their future? I don’t know and it scares me to think about.

Part of me thinks we will figure it out by then and they won’t have the same worries I do now but there’s always that small thought that turns the other way.

In the past couple months I have cried a lot, usually silently where no one knows. The main reason for these tears is fear caused mainly by politics. I cried through the 2024 campaign with fear of, what if Trump wins, that turned to the fear of what Trump will do in the next 4 years. I cried when I watched Kamala’s concession speech as she tried to remind us of the power each of us holds and to keep the hope for a better future and the idea of “we fight we win,’ and then recently when I listened to Joe Biden’s last speech in the oval office where he warned us about the possible outcomes of too much power and the dangerous tipping point we are headed toward if we are not careful. Both of these speeches have a very different look on power and where our country is headed but they both left an immense impact on my view of my world.

I hope the future is what Kamala has it out to be; the one most of us dream of. I truly hope that Biden’s worries and the fear that lives within a lot of us will become just a faint memory and not reality.

Today my mom wrote a blog about similar fears and thoughts about our political state and what it may mean. After reading her blog it got me thinking and after talking to her about what she wrote and my own thoughts, I teared up again.

I have been wanting to write about my thoughts and feelings with all the news that’s been circulating but never knowing where and how to start, but reading her blog and talking to her about it created a starting point to finally get my feelings into words.