干第一份工作，我有何收获？

虽然很多年长的美国人经常会问小孩“你长大了想干什么”，其实22岁以下的年轻人基本上没多少人真正考虑过这个问题。

我们的童年都在学习基本学科—文学、历史、科学和数学—也很少被要求这些科目的应用应该要呼应日后选择的职业。因此，我虽然喜欢我的童年和我接受的教育，却从来没想过哪个科目真的会对我成年的职业生涯有什么用。与我的阅读、写作和学习这个世界的运作规律相比，那些律师、医生、计算机程序员、老师或商人等工作在当时看来都如此陌生。

所以我在大学毕业之后找工作时，我确实很讨厌应试流程！我必须告诉那些面试官，我是真的愿意在他们公司上班，虽然我根本不知道这句话的真正意义！最后，我总算得到了一份工作，是在美国东北部康涅狄格州的一所寄宿学校担任数学老师，但我当时非常生气。

我的父母开车载我去了那所学校，我记得我当时根本不想和他们谈话。我以前当学生的时候，生活总是充满惊奇，身边的人也都对人文学科、开派对、做运动和我们未知的世界怀着共同的兴趣，这工作让我不得不改变这样的生活，来到这个很少有人和我志同道合的世界，因此我感到非常悲观。

然而，我很快就了解到我其实很适合现在这个新环境，主要是因为我喜欢和年轻人一起探索教育的奇妙之处。我从小到大都喜欢学校，所以我从事教学工作对我来说也很自然—为了解开数学题，我能够热情地学生交流，而且我和我的学生在算出因式分解题和解决二次方程式的过程中都很快乐。

我还喜欢和学生一起住在宿舍。即使我想念那些住在城市里的大学朋友，我还是很乐意和我的少年学生们分享探究在高中取得成功的方法。在他们计划到意大利、德国、法国和美国加州旅行时，我既能随行照料他们，又能借机和他们分享我对旅行和世界历史的热爱。

在这个2007年的人生大转折后，我当了十年的老师，我真的不能想象自己还能做其他什么职业。我热爱孩子们，热爱学习，还热爱思考怎么帮助孩子们学习。尽管我从来没真正想像过自己长大以后当老师，但我发现我还是小孩时为了了解世界所作的一切事情，实际上都完美转化成了我成年以后教导年轻人了解世界的能力。

- 供稿：Sam R.，30岁. 老师. 纽约州纽约市. 

What I Learned From My First Job

Although many older Americans will frequently ask a child, “What do you want to be when you grow up,” very few people under the age of 22 actually genuinely consider that question. 

We spend our childhoods studying topics in the liberal arts – literature, history, science, and math – and are rarely asked to apply it in a way that will reflect our later career. And so while I loved my childhood and my education, I never had any idea what actually made sense for my adult career. Jobs like lawyer, doctor, computer programmer, teacher, or businessman all seemed so foreign compared to my life of reading, writing, and learning about how the world worked.

And so when I applied for a job after college, I really hated the process! I had to tell these interviewers that I really wanted to work at their company, even though I had no idea what that actually meant! When I finally did get a job, as a math teacher at a boarding school in the state of Connecticut, in the Northeast United States, I was so angry. 

My parents drove me to the school, and I remember I did not want to talk to them. I was so pessimistic about having to change my life from the wonders of being a student, surrounded by people with common interests in the humanities, in going to parties, in playing sports, to this unknown world with so few people who were like me.

However, I soon learned that I fit right in in this new environment, mostly because I love working with young people as they discover the wonders of education. I had grown up enjoying school, and so teaching came naturally to me - I was able to communicate enthusiasm for doing math problems, and my students and I had fun figuring out how factoring works, or how to solve a quadratic equation. 

I also loved living in the dorm with students. Even though I missed my college friends who were living in cities, it was fun to share time with teenagers as they tried to figure out how to succeed in high school. And as they planned trips to places like Italy, Germany, France, and California, I was able to chaperone them and share my love of travel and world history with them.

Since that big transition in 2007, I have spent ten years as a teacher, and I can’t really imagine doing anything else. I love kids, I love learning, and I love thinking about how to help kids learn. And although I never really imagined being a teacher growing up, I found that all the work I did as a kid to learn about the world actually translated perfectly to my adult life of figuring out how to teach young people about it. 

- Sam R., 30. Teacher. New York, New York. 

要想了解更多此类故事，请访问: https://china.usembassy-china.org.cn/zh/education-culture-zh/xin-jiao-liu-magazine-zh/every-day-americans-zh/

For more stories like this, visit: https://china.usembassy-china.org.cn/education-culture/xin-jiao-liu-magazine/every-day-americans/