Howdy folks! For the past month, I have been debating between going down education or business as a career. I am currently pursuing a degree in Agricultural Education and minoring in Agricultural Business, and I will be a senior in the fall. I have a 3.96 GPA as well.
As a requirement for going down AgEd in California, you need 3,000 hours of direct, hands on agricultural experience by the end of your first semester student teaching. I have 1,640 hours currently. The pandemic made it difficult to get hours as no one was hiring. I’m worried I won’t have the hours to be able to complete the program.
The surge of gun violence in schools makes me terrified to go down education as well. If I were to teach I would do anything to protect my students, but there’s only so much I can do. There seems to be no easy answer to this horrible situation.
I have always wanted to be a teacher. My heart and passion lies in education, but I’m not sure I would be able to make it.
Teaching is like a cone of poop covered in ice cream. It looks great. You take a few licks and it even tastes great. Then you get to the poop and you realize you’ve made a terrible mistake but it’s too late.
You will always be able to transition from business into education if you decide to. Other way is a lot of crying and panic when you realize you’ve locked yourself into this awful career and don’t know how to get out
Been in education 15 years, just got out of it in may to go work in finance. Can’t recommend going into education as it currently is in the US. Underpaid, treated like crap, and you’ll end up working nights and weekends for lower middle class pay. Even if you care about kids (as most educators do), it’s not a viable long term profession right now.
Don’t do it. It isn’t worth it. Save yourself years of heartache.
A lot of the replies to this post seem to be a very basic “don’t do it”, but I think this is a lot more nuanced than that.
For context, I’ve been teaching maths in the UK for over 20 years, and I’m currently looking to follow a childhood dream and teach internationally.
Within the UK teaching is not as well paid as most other jobs I could have gone into with a maths degree. That said, the pay was good enough that I’ve always been comfortable.
The job comes with its stresses and bad days, but equally it can be massively rewarding. I also think you can’t really comprehend the various stresses until you start your teacher training (which is not to say they are greater or less than the stresses faced in other professions).
If you feel it is your path, then I would suggest going for it, but there are loads of options out there (depending on your financial situation / willingness to take risks etc). You could try teaching English abroad. You could train in a different country where there is less fear of gun violence. I think there are a number of options to spend a summer teaching in various African countries too which might be a way of testing how much you enjoy it?
Business is about people.
Education is about people.
Its just diffetent interactions of people.
According to me it’s a bit diplomatic question. Many may prefer education & at the same time others may prefer Business.
But I’d prefer business. Because if you know how to do your business, education may not matter that much. I told this because I’ve seen some people around me who are not that well educated ( not even primary class qualified ) but they are very well settled at present by their Businesses better than those who are degree holders.
At present I can tell this much only. If I get few more points I’ll definitely add up to this.