While my interests and goals have always changed throughout my life, my passion for receiving an education has been the one constant. While it may sound cliche, I have always believed in the notion that an education is the most valuable thing you can have because once you obtain it, it cannot be taken away.

Although I had dreamed of being a teacher as a child, I tried to imagine myself in other careers. In recent years, while having to decide what to do with my future, I realized that there was one clear answer that I had known all along. I became close with my teachers and became inspired by their dedication for what they do, despite the big changes coming from the Common Core Standards and the testing that comes along with it.

During my first semester of education classes, I realized that I am exactly where I should be. I was also shocked to learn about many of the issues with education today, one of which is an extremely large deficit of teachers. A report by the Learning Policy Institute has found that in the past five years, there has been a 35 percent drop in people enrolling in teacher preparation programs. On top of a decrease in new students entering the field, there is an increased rate of teachers retiring or even changing careers because they are fed up with the changes in recent years. It has been estimated that if this loss of teachers keeps up at this rate, there will be a shortage of around 112,000 teachers by 2018. The glaring issue with this is that when there is not a teacher available to teach a class, the group of students will be split up and placed into other classes, making for larger class sizes, and larger class sizes make for a lower quality education for the students, and a much more stressful task for the teachers.

While I may be crazy for learning all of these things and still choosing to stay with education, I want to be able to help other people, even if it means convincing a few students to value their education as much as I do. According to the National Center of Education Statistics, the national high school graduation rate has reached 82 percent, which is the highest it has ever been. Despite all of the turmoil that comes from political involvement, I am proudly sticking with my choice to become a teacher.