I found myself venturing into employable adulthood as a highly trained engineer at the same time my young cousins and sister were of middle-school age. I missed working with kids and realized that I had been finding ways to "teach" all along--as a TA, a teaching intern, a tutor, a babysitter, a camp counselor, and a homework helper. I applied for a teacher training program because I didn't know the first thing about running my own classroom, was accepted, and made my pivot.

At my first teaching job the first week of middle school was always hiking in the White Mountains for four days. In the middle of the first night the sweet, quiet girl in the bunk adjacent to me grabbed and shook my feet and started screaming "Where are you? WHERE ARE YOU!!" in the pitch black, but it turned out she was never actually awake and had no memory of it... So my VERY first night as a teacher, I was firmly traumatized by a student having some kind of weird dream.

I would bring my four young children with us to Hawaii!! If that's not allowed, I would install built-in shelves in our living room to make more room for all of our games and puzzles (and books) so that the kids don't need my help putting them away neatly and we can ALL have more fun playing games together. (Games grow brains bigger!)