Congratulations from all of us here at your high school — we are so thrilled to have heard from the PTA that you just got a job! And we are so excited for your newfound financial stability. We know, we know — it’s a part-time summer job at your college’s campus bookstore, but to us that’s just as great a title as any to put on our list of donors for this year’s Annual Fund!

As you know, we see every job as an opportunity to grow, learn, and send us funds to maintain our lawn. That’s right, the very lawn where years ago you sat and did your homework next to the beautiful plaque that the class before you donated.

And, it really means so much to us to watch our birds fly out of the high school nest and into an income bracket that could really benefit the Annual Fund this year. I mean, we have 85% of our goal, but as you know, that’s only a B. And we know that you are an A student. So much so that one year out of high school, you’re already employed! At your college! First you were paying tuition to them, now they’re paying you — so that you can pay us for our Annual Fund! We can’t say that we are surprised. Ever since you were in these halls, you always worked like you were getting paid for it. It was a wonderful aspect of you we could nurture, and we are not just saying that because it could give us a summer enrichment program starting 2017.

We don’t want to label your job right now. So, instead of thinking about it as earning “minimum wage,” we’d like to encourage you to see it as having “maximum potential… to support your Alma Mater’s Strategic Plan of 2016.” And we think it’s important to see every job as an integral learning experience — leading to bigger and better jobs down the line and bigger and better donations to our fundraising efforts.

We know that despite your incredible achievement and new endeavor, you will have so many places to go from here. You are primed for success in a globally changing society that begins with your bookstore shifts on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 12:30-2:30 pm and ends with a check made out to your high school to keep our foreign language teachers employed.

While you use your academic skills and apply them to the real world, like “alphabetizing the academic inventory in the biology section of the bookstore,” you probably realize how important it is to us to prepare our kids for the real world. Which is why we are thrilled that you can give even a fraction of your eight-dollar-an-hour wage to increase the amount of lab equipment we have for our STEM classes. You, of all alums, know what it’s like to benefit from hands-on learning.

This letter isn’t about convincing you to invest in our ever-changing academic curriculum. It’s about convincing you to invest in our ever-changing holistic curriculum, which does include our new athletic fields and tennis courts. We remember your tenure in Junior Varsity lacrosse, and we are so sure that your skills on the field are now being put to great use in your college campus center.

From the bottoms of our hearts, and from the bottom of your wallet, we want to say: we are so impressed with you. It takes a special person to be so young and so stably employed. We, in the education business, are very aware of how rare this is!

We wanted to send some support your way and let you know that your support our way is tax deductible. So, congratulations, again! And remember: to you, being a campus bookstore cashier may be part time. But to us, replacing our soccer field turf is full time.