My grand daughter (and she is grand) will soon be graduating from high school and wants to be a teacher. I was talking to Ron, a 4th grade teacher in the waiting room of the local Honda dealership, while getting the oil changed in my car. Mississippi is now cutting funding for schools and some teachers will be laid off. Ron says that means the size of his classes will increase as teachers have to absorb kids from dismissed teacher's classes. That may mean up to 35 kids in a classroom.

Ron says 4th graders are getting to the age when they start to get unruly and that means a lot of his time will be spent just keeping control of the classroom instead of teaching. And he has to buy a great deal of school supplies from his own pocket--his wife reminded him he needed to buy more pencils that day, even as school is ending for the year. He seemed like such a nice guy, dedicated and interested in his profession. Teachers like him eventually get burned out, so I hope he never loses his passion for teaching.

I had been trying to influence my grand daughter to be an RN or go to medical school instead of teaching. The baby boomer generation is getting older and there'll be great need for more nurses and doctors. But yesterday I was talking to another RN, who like myself, has worked down in the trenches in hospitals and she reminded me of the short staffing and working on holidays and weekends, the mandatory nights and overtime, the as*hole doctors--not all, but some--who use nurses as scapegoats when something goes wrong, about hospital administration who have their heads in the clouds and lost track of what real hands on nursing is all about. It is a very difficult and stressful profession.

Then we recalled the immense satisfaction in direct patient care. But you have to be in it for other reasons than a salary--nursing is called the caring profession for a reason. But teaching and a medical career are both a hard row to hoe--whatever grandbaby chooses will be a challenge. I secretly hope she won't choose either one.

susil