I think some of you may have misunderstood me or gotten the wrong impression of my motives for wanting to teach in China. Please allow me to clarify.

I am not looking at teaching ESL as a career choice in any way. It is purely a means to fund my wanderlust and at the same time, use a gift that I was born into possessing (the English language) and give that to children and adults in other countries so they may use it to better their lives, if they choose to do so.

I am not expecting China to be the Holy Grail of everything that is. Nor am I expecting it to be the death of my fiery passion. I look at life as movie that I get to be a actor therein, instead of just a observer thereof. The only thing I expect China to provide me with is an experience. Expect nothing, experience everything is my philosophy.

China is also not the only place I plan on visiting or teaching in, it is just the springboard. My hope is to teach for a year or two in China, while using my free time to explore and volunteer in places that need help. After the year or two is over and I've saved up some money. I will visit the middle east, southeast Asia, Africa, Europe, etc., either doing more teaching, volunteering, or a mix of both.

At the end of my journey, however long or short it turns out to be, I hope to have become a man who is more conscious of the World and it's people, cultures, problems, beauty, and sacredness. Then, at that point, make a decision on what I am going to align my passion with and devote my life to doing. Right now I have two options in front of me. Accept my Stanford Medical School offer and become a Doctor, or accept the World's offer to experience it in all of it's excitement and sadness, beauty and ugliness, and sacredness and irreverence. Choosing option 1 almost guarantees that there will never be another chance to experience option 2 in the way I can now, as that is a long train that one does not get off of until retirement years. There is no guarantee that I will even make it to those years. Medical school will always be an option, no matter what age I am. But after this journey, who even knows if I will still want to become a doctor anymore? I may fall in love with India and open a boys and girls club or get involved with a refugee center in the middle east. I do not know. I can't make a decision that is going to affect how I impact the world, if I have never experienced the world. All I know right now is that I want my life to have meaning and purpose. I know that I love people, and I love helping and giving in any way that I can. I know that I want to leave my footprints in the sand of time and know that because I was here, I had an impact on someone's life which will in turn cause them to have an impact on someone else. Whether that impact would be saving their life because of my medical training, or changing their life because of my worldly training, I do not know yet.