starting law school or work on an M.B.A.; some are taking entry-level business jobs; some are moving back home to their parents' to decompress from four years of college, save some money, and consider their choices. Their friend the teacher is probably making as much or more money than most. He's probably taking on greater personal challenges in his day-to-day work, and he's working in the public sector, making a difference in the education arena that so many commentators spill so much ink over in the newspapers and magazines. He's no underachiever. He looks to the world like a person with a vital and important professional life. Now look forward another three or four years. The teacher's friends are less likely to be business or law students, and more likely to be business people and lawyers. Those who took the academic route might well be considering the beginnings of their Ph.D. dissertations. Even those who took the lowest-level business jobs are now likely to be reaching modestly higher rungs on the career ladder. Certainly some of his friends might still be traveling, or still be living at home, working jobs that aren't panning out and thinking about the right changes to make. But on the whole, our young teacher, who has by now gotten the hang of how to be a classroom educator and has the skills to walk into class with confidence and break into a lesson without too much nervous perspiration, is one of the lower earners in his cohort, and probably feels a good deal less like the leader of the pack. "What do you guys do?" someone might ask a table full of them at the local pub. "Well, I'm a med student, 4th year." "I'm a lawyer over at Huddle & Pass." "I'm an editor at a national magazine." And our teacher says, "I teach 3rd grade," or "I teach high school biology." No need to feel ashamed, of course. But there's not a lot of prestige for him to grab hold of as he tells his professional story. At the age of 25 or so, that might not ...
