Friday, April 18, 2008

Colorado or New Jersey?

Ok. All of my wonderful friends, I need help. I need pros and cons. I have narrowed down all of my choices to (1) Colorado or (2) New Jersey. I will either be teaching elementary school in Denver through the Teach for America program. Or I will be attending grad school at Montclair State University. First I will give you the pros I can think of.

NEW JERSEY
1) I will be a quick train ride away from Manhattan
2) I get my master's degree for FREE
3) I will have awesome opportunities for internships
4) I will make my family proud of me (I am the first to graduate from college)
5) I will be on the East Coast
6) I will get to make new friends at a new school

COLORADO
1) I will have a salary
2) I will become certified as a teacher for the state of Colorado
3) I can make a difference in a child's life
4) It is pretty there and I will still get to have mountains
5) I will get about 10,000 dollars to attend school after my two years of teaching are done
6) I can be done teaching in two years if I hate it or I can stay and work as a teacher for the rest of my life if I love it

Now for the cons:

NEW JERSEY
1) It is a long plane ride home and I HATE airplanes
2) It is really expensive to live there and I probably can't afford a car
3) I don't know ANYONE and I don't have any family or friends close by
4) I am burnt out because I went through school for three years straight and need a break


COLORADO
1) I won't be furthering my education
2) I could lose my full-ride to grad school (if they can't defer it, which they might be able to)
3) My family doesn't want me to do this
4) It is an extremely hard and demanding job and I would have to work really hard at it and I would be heartbroken if I couldn't make a difference

Ok...that is what I could think of off the top of my head. So, what other pros and cons can you think of??

5 comments:

Mary Killion said...

o0o0o0o this is tricky. Each place offers excellent benefits...well, Chris and I are going to talk it over and we will tell you what we think! :)

emily and kevin griffin said...

well, i'll tell you what i think...you're pretty. so i think you should stay in utah so we can play. don't ask mary...she's biased towards new jersey...haha. just kidding. you rock.

Mary Killion said...

bahaha Yes I am biased towards Jersey, but since we won't be out there for awhile, I wouldn't send Heather out there alone! ;)

I know this post says NJ or CO, but is there any possibility for UT? So you can play, like Emily suggests? :D

Heather said...

i want to stay in utah and defer grad school for a year. but it isn't guaranteed that i would still get my scholarships and I need a job. What would i do?

Cassandra said...

The east coast is a tough place to live when you know no one and have never been there. On the other hand, graduate degree for free is pretty much my idea of heaven (do NOT go into as much debt as I'm in!) And you could handle the snooty east coasters after a year or two, no problem. Would your folks be more ok with the TFA option if you pointed out that real world experience is pretty much way important to future employers? I recently filled in an application and had to put "zero years experience" for like every category. I said I had management experience, thinking of my year as ward activities committee chair, but that was probably really stretching it.

So basically, they're both good and I'm not help at all : )

If you come to Denver we can go hiking...

...unless I move to DC, in which go to New Jersey and we can go, um, shopping...or something...