The advantage of being a teacher, especially of a subject you love, is that you will learn more about your subject preparing to teach your subject than you would just as a student. You will actually become a repository for this body of knowledge, a living book, if you will, and the information you dispense to others will be flavored and seasoned with your personality, your wit, your personal insights and understandings.

There may be many other instructors in your field, but there will be only one YOU, and therefore you're instruction will be unique; there are students that you can reach that no one else can. You will provide them with a perspective for seeing this field of knowledge through your eyes. You are their mentor, their role model, their inspirator and friend; they will remember you and your input into their life, and you have an opportunity to shape their world. Your influence will be second only to their parents. By pouring into them, you are reproducing yourself and your personal excellence. Whether you love your subject, hate it or are indifferent to it, they will know, and will be unchangably marked by the spirit and fire that you bring to the moment.

Your impact can be as little as handing out a few passing grades or as great is inspiring an entire educational revolution that spans beyond your generation. There are many potential professors, leaders, diplomats, scholars and educators out there disguised as wayward adults and confused kids; many of them will pass through your classes for the chance to "taste your cooking" and be impacted for life by your words, wisdom and passion; what will you do with that opportunity? "The one who instructs a child changes the world."

Go for it, my dear! And may your students never, ever forget the time spent under your tutelage...