First Week of Internship

What are you most surprised by during your first week of internship and why? I never would have believed that within the first couple of hours in my internship, I would have had a complete change of heart when it came to my future career choices. For almost a year I had felt very passionately for special education and I did not believe that I would ever change my mind about what it is I was going to be doing with my life. I had it all figured out, until I spent a day in a classroom. I do not remember much about my life when I was in the first grade, and I now know why. My brain must have been completely turned off due to boredom. Though this may sound unprofessional and maybe even a bit childish, I strongly believe that though I love special education and feel the need to help children who need special attention out, it is just not what I want to do for the rest of my life. I cannot handle a group of children yelling and all calling for my attention at a time. I had no idea I would learn this in a day. What I was most afraid of before coming into this internship was realizing that special education is not what I want to do, because that would mean that I would have to start over and begin, once again, to evaluate myself and finally find what it is I need to be spending my life on. This happened, and now I am terrified. Though it has only been two days, my mind is restless and everything the adults have told me for years and years is becoming more and more meaningless to me. I just know that I will only live once and I want to live happy. I don't want to look back when I am thirty and wish I had taken a different path. I wake up hoping I will get into a small car accident or that my house will catch fire simply so that I do not have to attend my internship. It scares me to think that maybe this is not for me. I do not want to start from scratch, but during this first week of internship, I have learned that elementary school just isn't for me.
What goods and/or services does your company provide to the community and how do they consider their role in the community, responsibilities to society? Though my experience with Explorer Elementary hasn't been the greatest time of my life, so far, it gives a lot to the community. It is a charter school that is filled with loving teachers and a large number of dedicated high school students and parents who are willing to donate their time to helping out the teachers who need someone to take the time to help out an individual student who they feel need extra attention. Teachers like Ms. Barnes, my mentor, and the special education teacher, get up every morning and get ready to head to their jobs where they are treated with respect and kindness due to the love, patience, and time that they dedicate to the children that they teach every day. The respect the teachers at this school have for each other is obvious, for they are all very caring and give these kids something that they are very lucky to receive in such a loving way, an education. They all take their jobs seriously and their role in the community is not only important to them, it is important to everyone in this country, for these kids are the future, and their education is very important. They have a huge responsibility with these children and society is counting on them to help these children learn how to make decisions and make them want to learn more to make a better future for the earth we all live in. Thus far, it has been a nurturing experience and though I am not exactly ecstatic about everything I do at this workplace, working with the children is the highlight of my everyday.