What Happened to Wonder?

Remember when we were little and fascinated by everything simple? I remember riding home with my cousin Jake when he was a toddler and him repeating, "Moon, moon!" until I was silently begging him to say anything but moon. Whoever says kids have short attention spans was not in the car that day. Watch kindergartners waiting for the bus or walking home in the rain. They're fascinated - by the weather and the cars driving by and the people across the street. We grow up and become numb to everything that's around us and forget what it's like to wonder.
I can sense it in myself. I'm so focused on homework and Senate and accomplishing this and finishing that that I forget to experience. I'm not learning anything in my classes - there's so many projects and papers and busy work that they mean nothing. I cross one off the list and move on to the next one, not proof reading, not processing, simply saving, printing, and turning in. Somehow they come back with A's on them. College is not teaching me how to think - it's teaching me how to turn in homework.
I don't know how long it's been since I've had a good conversation with somebody - one where neither one of us were in a hurry...where we just sat down with a coffee or a beer and pondered something about the world and figured out a way to fix it. Even if the solution only lasted as long as the beverage in our hands, for a moment, a problem was fixed.
I miss conversations like those. I miss experiencing things. I'm bored and overwhelmed all at the same time. Overwhelmed by everything and feeling passion for nothing. I want to be back with my kids at the early intervention center or at Head Start. I want to be student teaching - I want to be REALLY teaching. I'm ready - send me out in to the world!!!
Frustrated with my ed classes today I realized something - I could graduate in May and have a degree. I could walk across the stage, get a job, and move on!!! But I would be graduating with a Political Science degree. A degree which does not allow me to do what I so desperately want to do - teach. "You could still do Teach for America..." the voice in the back of my head says. I could, but I'm not ready. I would be cheating my students (assuming I even got in) In order to be an effective educator, I need to student teach. Graduation would be the easy way out. An escape from fearing that the busy work will never be over.
I want a job where I can make a difference. I also want a job that isn't with me all of the time. I want time to spend with my family - time to go to concerts and plays and take fun classes - time to 'sharpen the saw' - to give back to myself so I stop feeling so drained all the time. If teaching will absorb all of this 'self time', is it worth it to me?
"You're one of the few that's really meant to be in the classroom," someone told me today. "You owe it to your future students to stick this out." But what if all I want is to wonder again - to solve the problems of the world over coffee - to volunteer and give back...to enjoy and experience instead of just doing...