On how much life changes in three years... and sometimes doesn't.

There was a recent episode of How I Met Your Mother in which the three main guys reveal that they get together every three years to watch the Star Wars trilogy and reminisce about where they were three years ago. As a next step, they would fantasize about where they thought they would be three years later -- which for these guys always involved being some combination of successful, married, rich, and heavily moustached.  Considering I spend most of my days trying not to get to the point where I sit and stare at the wall thinking, "This is my life, huh," it may surprise you, my loyal reader, to read that I am about to the exactly that.  But when a favorite show tells me to do something, I usually do it.  Whether it's "Don't go away, we'll be right back," or "examine your life," I am a slave to the television.  Always have been.  Something about brainwaves being manipulated at night; I don't know.  Anyway, here it is.

Three Years Ago:
Three years ago, I was 21.  Exciting age of finally legally doing what I had already been doing in verrry responsible moderation being one year away from graduating college aside, I had no idea what I even wanted to be doing in three years.  I had virtually no plans.  Something like grad school or maybe teaching, but I had no idea how to accomplish either of those things.  They tell you that you need to go to college in order to get a job.  And, in many cases, you do.  What they don't tell you is that having a college degree does not magically put you in some kind of Stonecutters-esque secret society in which your name is spontaneously carved on a list and distributed to all potential employers or graduate school-runners.  The fact that I refer to deans of colleges which contain graduate schools as "Graduate school-runners" is a further testament to my cluelessness.  Want to know a secret something that everyone who talks to me for two minutes on any given day already knows?  I still have no idea what I'm doing.
Facebook timeline (Which is growing on me, I have to admit) reminds me that about three years ago my boyfriend of three months was just getting out of the hospital (nothing major, just a failing liver inadvertently caused by self-medicating for a benign tumor in his femur, which doctors overlooked for two or more years) and we took an exciting trip to the beach with friends.  That year was my SAI formal, which I planned (poorly) and spent so much time stressing out over it (panicking at last minute) that I literally made myself sick over the ordeal.  Because that's a real-world problem: booking the proper venue for ladies and their dates to parade around in fancy clothes for a few hours.  But I can't be too hard on 21-year-old me.  It's not fair to yell at a child for crying when their ice cream falls to the ground, just because one day they will be 24, barley have a job, and somehow have to figure out how to pay for that degree that has so far served no other purpose than giving the cat something to knock over at night.  For a child, fallen ice cream is a legitimate problem and is capable of causing distress, in the same way that 21-year-old me lost sleep over booking the pavilion and figuring out exactly how to make her bangs lie flat without parting in the middle (result: unsuccessful).
21-year-old me wrote papers the night before they were due, drank coffee like it was water, and occasionally skipped class simply because she couldn't find a parking space (I'm not kidding.  The parking situation in college was insane).
21-year-old me went to Europe for the summer, spent two weeks in England, a weekend in Paris, and  a few hours in Scotland and Wales.  21-year-old me discovered that she was not cut out for a long-distance relationship, and when 21-year-old me became 22-year-old me, moved in with her boyfriend to start an exciting adventure of never doing dishes or laundry, spending way too much money caring for a cat, and always having someone to cuddle with at night.

Present
I think the three-years-ago version of me just thought everything would fall into place by now and "work itself out."  Present-me is learning that the universe at the same time adamantly follows that policy and adamantly doesn't.  You can't sit around a wait for a job to come to you.  But, after you send resumes and "please hire me emails" and leave messages with enough secretaries, there is a finite amount of things you can do from there.  Present-me is learning to keep that slowly rising scream quiet, but it's a persistent little monster.  I try not to wallow, but there are times when I want to sit down and make a "reasons my life sucks" list.  I do not do this, at least not in list form.  Occasionally I do it on Skype, in essay form, when unsuspecting friends ask the seemingly harmless question of "How's it going?"  Perfectly aware that they do not want the sad-sack story I am about to give them, I proceed anyway.  They say something like, "It'll get better!" and then I talk about my cat until we both get bored enough to be finished with the conversation.  But those are the bad days.
On the good days, I have amusing anecdotes from the day's adventures in substitute teaching or a story about my drive to or from work or the dream I most recently remember.  On the good days, getting to eat chocolate and watch The Simpsons is a perfectly acceptable high point of the day, and whether or not I can find something to complain about, I don't.  I will still talk about my cat.

Three Years from Now
In three years, I dearly hope that I have a full-time teaching job and am John Keating-ing my way through my days.  I will find a class of students who are perfectly motivated, respectful, understand my unique brand of sarcasm - rather than mistaking it for rudeness - and who come to class eager to discuss literature and hear what I think about what was written.  No.  Just about none of that will actually happen, I'm sure.  For one, I'd be doing my students a disservice to inundate them with "this is what I think about everything" and not give them the opportunity to explore their own consciousness.  Secondly... Let's be real.  High school hasn't change since I've been in it, and I doubt it will change when I'm teaching it.  Regardless of how exciting I am, somewhere in the back of their heads, they will still probably be wishing they were asleep, or playing video games, or eating chocolate and watching The Simpsons.  If I have a job at a school where I am accepted and I don't come home and try to wash then sleep every day off of me -- I'll say good enough.
I'll be 26 then.   No I won't.  I can add.  I'll be 27.  It's strange to say that I might be married, maybe even working towards having smaller, louder, needier versions of myself running around stinking up the place -- but I suppose it's a very real possibility.  I guess that will have to depend on the job situation, though.  If I'm still waiting by the phone every night for Subfinder to give me a job for the next day, I highly doubt procreation will be in the cards just yet.
I'd like to not be so tremendously in debt, but I've found that if you view loan payments as any other bill, it's a little easier to write the check.  Pay rent, pay car, pay car insurance, pay phone, pay cable/satelite/internet, pay for those five or so years I spent on an education that has hopefully started mattering by now.... See?  It's easy!  Whistle while you do it, and it's even more fun (whistling significantly reduces the fun-factor for me, as I can only get out approximately two pitches.  You do not want to hear my "Twinkle twinkle")!
I imagine I will still probably sing terrible improvisational ballads about whatever food I am cooking and, and I will still bore the pants off of anyone unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of a cat story.