First, teach for just two years. Then, if you want, go back to your original plans. What you lost on the traditional ladder to success you've gained in experience. You can still recuit at age 25 and you can still be a journalist. Be creative.
Second, teaching is more fun than that.
* Teaching is funny. Children are not cute. They are dumb, and that is funny. When I was teaching sex-ed to the sixth grade, there were plenty of questions such as this one: "If an alien came down to Chicago and had sex with a person, what would their children be like?" This, after we finished Macbeth.
* If you get bored, give up. In the classroom, you are the only boss. If something gets boring, just stop and do something else. If you don't want to correct something, throw it away. You can't do that on Wall Street.
* You never work. In Massachusetts, you get a week of vacation every two months. Plus you get all holidays off, and three months in the summer. That's plenty of time to write your novel, sing in your band and read the books you'd never have the time to read working for McKinsey and Company.
* Create your own army. Jack London is impossible to understand without being familiar with Marxism. "To Build a Fire": What drives the prospector to his death? "Money, Mr. Mayo. It's all money. Greed!" Fahrenheit 451: "Write a three-paragraph essay on why technology is out of control and needs to be reined in by strong, direct government action." The O.J. Trail: "Would this have happened in Massachusetts?" "No, Mr. Mayo!" Excellent, said Mr. Burns.
* Get them to do your thinking for you. Give them an Emily Dickinson poem and watch them run. I barely understand it; they write essays that explain it to me. If Harvard professors can do it, so can you.
* Life is more interesting. Not only do you get to hang around with creative, intelligent colleagues putting their educations to work, but the children and their families give your days a deeper perspective. As one of my fellow teachers has said, teaching isn't good, but it gives you access to the good. You're not hanging around people who talk about their investments or their business all the time.
And as for those Brewhouse wraiths, they spent half their time saying, "Thank God I'm around Harvard people. Finally I can talk to someone who can understand me." What happened to these people?
It's true--if you're good, teaching is fun, and the children are, too. The teaching life is a good one, and only after you've been in it for a while can you understand how "fulfilling," to use a trite old word, it really can be.
Maybe after two years you, like me, will want to stay on teaching. And maybe you too will want to start your own school in the city, doing what Nativity does here in Roxbury, namely sharing the wealth and having fun while you're doing it.
Most importantly, you'll be turning some lives around, each one as big as your own. And they'll learn that there's more to life than money, and they'll call you "Captain, my captain," and maybe they'll come back to fix the city's problems. And if they're lucky, they'll teach.
Michael K. Mayo '94 is a former Associate Editorial Chair of The Crimson.
The best solution is to teach. Give your students an Emily Dickinson poem and watch them run.