Kindergarten thoughts

On Thursday afternoon, I ventured across campus to Wilcox Hall, home of Punahou's Kindergarten. I have fond memories of this building and the year I spent with Mr. Yorck and Ms. Tanabe. Yesterday I walked the 10 minutes uphill simply to drop off some paperwork from the office. I dreaded this trip all morning, but was pleasantly surprised to find one of my Kindergarten teachers there. We chatted about what I was planning on doing with my life; she phrased it as "so, you're never leaving Punahou again, right?" When I told her I was leaving the country, she said that was okay, as long as I came back next summer (which I'm not). Another Kindergarten teacher overheard our conversation, and, I'm not kidding, introduced herself as "you're Krystle? Oh my goodness, its so nice to meet you! You're my angel! Like, I started hearing about you earlier this week, then more today! I promise, we were just talking about you! You can't ever leave us!"

I promise this has a point. Today, I talked with Mrs. Tyau, a middle-school supervisor at Punahou. In contrast to yesterday, we discussed the benefit of leaving Punahou. Students at Punahou are extremely privileged with high-tech electronics (they're moving toward a system in which every student over 4th grade gets a computer to borrow every year), a brand-new 65 million dollar middle school, and other such extravagant features. She said that when Punahou grads go out in the world and share the skills they learned in school it almost makes everything seem worth the huge amounts of money that is spent on a Punahou education. (Just for fun, here's a bit of trivia. Currently, a year of Kindergarten costs $15,800. When I was in Kindergarten, the cost was about $5,000. If the current price remains constant, which it won't, a child who spends 13 years at Punahou will cost $205,400.)

So, where does this leave me? I'm totally conflicted about what to do with my life. My mom recently said, "If nothing else, you'll always have a job at Punahou." This is probably true. I could probably teach at Punahou with children who were most likely born into money and will most likely succeed. Or, I could go elsewhere and work with people who are not so lucky.

In the meantime, I'll go to Japan.