32-Year-Old Jealousy

Well, it's that time again.  When the weather turns cooler (even in North Carolina), football takes over many lives, talk turns to Halloween costumes...and the little rascals come asking for college letters of recommendation.  It's funny how during the fall of their senior year, students who had you for junior year English suddenly and finally realize just how amazing a teacher you were and how no one else had as much of an impact on them as you did.  Huh.  Interesting.

As the requests roll in from the land of Glenbrook North, I've considered charging $50 per letter.  I mean no skin off their backs, right?

I've written quite a few letters of recommendation in my short career as a teacher, since I taught juniors for three out of the four years of teaching.  When I'd write letters at Payton (translation: when I was still employed), I felt a slight longing and jealousy directed toward all of the amazing things these cream-of-the-crop students would accomplish, toward how much more money they would make than me, and I felt woe-as-me over the fact that I would remain this lowly English teacher while they took over the world.  How did all of that money and time spent on my education lead me to a career writing letters for young people to actually make money and a name for themselves?  Yeah, yeah, yeah, teaching is important work and all of that crap.

I would joke with these students at the end of the year that I hoped they would remember me...and hire me one day.  I was only partly joking.

Well, now it's worse.  Way worse.  I am writing letters of recommendation for students from Glenbrook North -- students who will mostly go on to big state universities and who will join sororities and fraternities and land high-paying jobs based on all of the connections that they had before they were born.  Not that these aren't nice kids or that I don't wish them the best.  The real difference in writing the letters this time around  is that I am no longer a lowly English teacher who decided to take all of that education and turn it into a job that political candidates often put in the same category as nurses and truck drivers (not that there's anything wrong with those professions, but you know what I mean).  No, this time around, I am 100% unemployed.  Looking into jobs that I am as qualified for as a 23-year-old, or, worse, an 18-year-old.  I know, I know -- it's all part of this move and figuring out how I want my life to be and trying new things and getting out of teaching.  But, holy crap, right now, it sucks.  Right now, I hate that I am jealous of these almost college kids who have their whole lives ahead of them.  I know I sound like a bitter old crotchedy person who should have a cigarette hanging out of my mouth.  (BTW, I just googled the word "crotchedy" to make sure I was spelling it correctly, and wouldn't you know it, here is the definition and sample usage according to the online urban dictionary: "Crotchedy: A grumpy person who has no life.  That teacher is a crotchedy old lady."  Well, fuck me.  

Maybe I should start stripping like Diablo Cody.  Maybe I should change my name like Diablo Cody did.  Oh, wait, does that mean I'm now jealous of Diablo Cody?  At least she's out of college.