happy 1st PhD anniversary to me!

so where do i stand a year into being a phd?

• recently finished with the last LyonGroup paper (YAY)
• about to start writing the first NewGroup paper 
• have gotten a good taste of grant writing under my belt, for better or for worse
• extremely ready to be done having to answer to somebody else on a daily to bi-daily basis at work (unfortunate, as i will be here for probably another year or so)
• still wondering what i really want to do with my life. i'm pretty sure i'd like to teach.  unfortunately i have NO idea if i will be any good at it.  am hoping to get some small amount of real teaching in before a job search.  not sure if i want to teach at a small four year school where i will have to do research or a two year school (ie community college) where there would be no teaching requirements and it may end up being a very rewarding teaching environment. there are pros and cons to both options as well as personal issues with both options that i need to work out.

4 year college, where i would have to do research and teach upper-level pchem courses: 

pros: small classes = opportunity for good teacher/student interactions

          research = hopefully a great teaching tool to keep students passionate about science (i like this b/c the lack of research, ie all exps done had a known outcome, had a really negative effect on me in my 2nd-3rd years of undergrad and it wasn't until i started my thesis work in my 4th year that i became reinvigorated towards chemistry)

cons: tenure = both teaching and research dependent

          research = grant writing, ugh

issues:  so, i'm not the most confident of my pchem skills.  i know, i have a phd in pchem, BUT hear me out:  we were required to take very few classes in grad school and my advisor was not into letting you take more classes than were required.  the year i took my 3 core pchem classes, i had only one prof from whom we received coherent lectures and i felt i came out of the class having learned at least a little something of stat mech.  flash forward to the pchem department now: the addition of bright young new profs means that the ONE prof that i had that made ANY sense at ALL is considered by the newbie pchem students as the WORST teacher they have had! basically, i feel like i still need to teach myself grad level quantum rather than just having to give myself a refresher before jumping up in front of people and acting like i KNOW the stuff.  so, i'm a little scared of teaching upper-level courses.  

two year college, where i would only have to teach lower level chem courses, no research

pros: small classes

          no research = no grant writing and can focus totally on teaching (when not dealing with committee meetings)

          teaching lower level courses = partially for previously admitted "issue" with upper level courses and partially b/c at the lower levels you still have a chance to impact students' perspectives on chemistry and science in general. maybe they aren't all (or maybe even any) planning a career in chem, but that doesn't mean you can't help them see how cool it can be and how it is all around us.  if a student is taking pchem, they have already been won over. i promise. no one takes pchem for the fun of it and it is not a prereq for anything. this is also why teaching high school seemed attractive to me.

cons: no research = i might miss research if i'm not doing it at all anymore, and as i mentioned above, i like the idea of using it as a tool to keep students interested.

issues: superiority complex = i admit to an elitist intellectual egotism that makes me want to teach at a "good" place, rather than a community college.  like they aren't real profs there or something.  this is sort of funny since i also think i'm not good enough to teach at the "good" places.  i hope to smother out this egotism, even if i don't end up at a community college b/c it's a pretty crappy thing to have.