Welcome back happy hour listeners. I'm so excited to be here with you all again for another episode of Bachelor happy hour.

I am sad to say that I'm here solo today, Bethel will not be with us. She will rejoin us next week, but I am excited because we are going to be having Nate and Rodney on today.

So we're going to be third wheeling a little bit and I'm not really sure if I'm the third wheel or Rodney's the third wheel, but I cannot wait to have two of my favorite guys on and to get all of that good energy that they always bring.

But before we jump into that, I want to do a little life update and a little recap, you know, it has been an incredibly heavy week as a teacher.

And this year has been completely wild. It's been something that I couldn't even imagine, you know, starting the school year as miss young and miss young the bachelor.

It has been a complete whirlwind hanging out with my students teaching in the classroom and then living that double life as a bachelor at walking red carpets and going to premieres.

And wow, have things changed. It has really got me in this reflective mindset and I, you know, a few weeks ago was was talking with one of my co-workers who truly just did a mental health check in with me.

And I'm a big advocate for mental health and being able to talk, being able to share those things, being able to be vulnerable and open up and I will be very honest with you.

This is not easy for me to talk about because as important as I know vulnerability is it's not an easy thing for me.

Even though I was on the show in this very vulnerable situation, so I'm kind of just giving you a little inside scoop today.

But I was sitting down with my co-worker and we were just kind of talking about this school year and how long we've been in survival mode.

And my co-worker kind of just asked me, well, Michelle, how long have you been in survival mode? And, you know, as she asked that, it kind of caught me off guard to actually stop and think how long I've been in this position.

And my response was two years. I've been in the survival mode two years where I have just been flying by the seat of my pants.

But really not necessarily living or just surviving it with the pandemic, with going through these crazy but awesome changes as the show with getting a fiance.

There's just so much going on.

And as I kind of sat and thought about that and thought about the position that I'm in, it really just

highlighted the fact that there is so much going on with our education system. And I really feel that, you know, as I move into this next year, I have

decided to step out of the classroom.

I need to make sure that one I'm taking care of myself, but two, those teachers and those who are in the profession know that teaching is a profession that is completely built on passion.

Our foundation is passion. It's not money. It's not materials. It's not benefits. We are in it for the passion.

And the amazing thing about that is a lot of wonderful things can come from that.

The difficult part of that and the realistic side of that is that when it's built on passion, if those people who are in those foundations aren't value, if they're not supported,

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