I always told myself I would never, ever want to be a teacher. I hated the idea. I've never liked dealing with the young and ignorant. They bother me. Hell, I bother myself.

I would hate to have me as a student. It would be excruciating. I never expected that the more I learned, the more I grew as an educated, insightful person that it would increase I wanted to share what I knew with others. Maybe it has something to do with pride - the "look what I can do!" factor.

It might have even some altruistic roots. I'm not really sure. All that I know is that in the time span of two years, I went from loathing the idea of standing in front of a classroom to relishing the opportunity to help my friends and classmates with their work. I'm not about to switch my major to education, however.

In fact, I think it is kind of unfair to me to even entertain the idea. I really don't think that I would be an effective teacher without experiencing what the real world is like first. I say real world, but what I mean is the world outside of education. The world of managers, budgets and customers. The world of deadlines and regulations.

It's not that these things don't exist in the field of education ... it's that I won't be teaching to a bunch of future teachers. I'll be teaching to engineers and writers and businessmen (and women). These people will be working in the "real world" - and I think they deserve a "real world" education.

I don't know if I could give that without experiencing it for myself. I was lucky enough to attend the Pennsylvania Teacher of the Year conference in Harrisburg last week in support of one of my high school teachers, Ted Barbour. He was my physics teacher in high school, and fortunate enough to be nominated as a finalist for Teacher of the Year.

Barbour has advised me on almost every aspect of my life throughout the course of the last three years, and without his guidance I probably wouldn't be writing here today (queue the player haters who wished I wasn't.) Although he did not win the award (it went to an elementary school teacher - blasphemy, I know) he managed to inspire me and my peers.

Barbour is a Penn State graduate and traveled through England and Japan as a mechanical engineer before having, as he would describe it, a "teaching eureka." I suppose the basis of my "work before teach" attitude comes from his example, because he was able to provide his students with real, working knowledge rather than theoretically applicable ideas.

I can tell you it worked because the information he taught me is the only thing I remember from high school. I don't remember what the Latin roots of "oligarchy" mean and I couldn't tell you who the 15th US president was (although Google can - it was James Buchanan.) I couldn't tell you anything about calculus (and I also took it my freshman year here at PSU!) and I couldn't tell you if Monet's work was impressionistic or contemporary.

What I can tell you is that the force of gravity on earth is 9.8 meters per second, squared. I know that because I can use it to find out how many G's I am pulling on a roller coaster. I can also estimate how long it will take me to stop my car in an accident and I can tell you the best angle to launch a pumpkin for distance.

I'm not saying all of these things are practical, but they do come in handy, and I have actually used my physics knowledge gained from Barbour's class outside of it. I can't even say that about classes I've taken here at Penn State. I'm not trying to take anything away from the education majors here - I think it is great that they are so gung-ho about such an important and worthwhile career... I just think they might want to think twice about diving into it head-first.

Go out -- do what you love before you teach what you love. If you want to teach high school English, go work at a newspaper for a while. Learn what real editing is about. Collect theories and ideas based on things you've actually experienced, rather than things you've read in a book.

An education is great - there is a lot to be said for really knowing the information you're going to teach.

But without experiencing what parts of that education are actually useful and applicable, I really don't think students will be getting something worthwhile to their future.

If you're an education major currently, or considering a teaching career in your future - delay it for a few years. Go out and get a job outside of education. Write, paint, build or engineer. Be the teacher that has "been there and done that."

Your students will only respect and appreciate you that much more.