As a child, I was asked ‘what do you want to be when you are older?’ or ‘what is your dream job?”, each time I would reply ‘a famous tennis player, or a teacher’. I had the answer branded in my mind and I was determined to make sure it would one day be true. Although, when I was young I was never sure why I wanted to be a teacher, just that I did. I was a keen tennis player and admired my coach; he was enthusiastic, kind and caring, and had the balance of strict but fair down to a tee. So when I was asked to help coach younger children one summer, I jumped at the chance. Now, when asked: ‘why teaching?’, I always think back to this summer job I had when I was 11. I loved helping the younger children by encouraging and motivating them. There was one young girl, not much older than five, that always stands out to me. She hadn’t played much tennis before and was very anxious about beginning her lessons, so I was asked to be her buddy, and help her through each lesson. This, I think, is what made me realise that teaching is what I want to do. I loved watching her grow not only in herself and her confidence, but also as she progressed in her tennis. She began as a quiet and shy girl, who knew none of the other children, and left arm in arm chatting with the friends she had made. After this, my mind was set. Teaching was for me, this job sealed the deal and getting paid at the end of the summer made it all worth while. I still remember coming home after my final day and telling my dad about my decided career path, only to later discover that he too was having similar ideas, as later that year he left his supermarket job and returned to university, and wound up becoming an English teacher. Eleven year old me knew that this was ‘fate’, even if I didn’t exactly know what the word meant.