When I graduated from college and was preparing for my first term as a grade school teacher, I did not realize how difficult it was going to be to come up with the coursework to teach my class. I figured that I would get a lot more help than I did and was so nervous that I would not fit everything that they needed to learn into one year.

I decided that for some things, I would have them write essays on their own time. This way, they could learn, but I would not have to take up classroom time to teach everything to them. This plan was going to work so great, but I did not anticipate all the time it was going to take me to mark all of these papers.

The next year, as I was a lot more relaxed, I gave the class much less term papers. I knew what I had to teach and how I was going to fit it all in. I had so much more time left for myself the second year and decided that I might be good at this job after all.