My Unemployed Life: Out of College and Jobless

It was less than reassuring to hear repeatedly throughout my final year as an undergraduate that this was the worst time to be graduating from college, that the job market was more bleak than the daily dining hall options, and that soon I would be emerging into the dark underbelly of unemployed American life, forced to confront and question my self-worth and every misstep that had led me to this Top Ramen-infested ditch.

Embittered professors whose positions were being threatened by budget cuts told me that going to graduate school now guaranteed as much financial security as following the path of a starving artist, so that was out. When May 2010 arrived and I bid farewell to my college days with a Bachelor of Arts in Literature, I wondered what promise America now held for an ambitious young 22-year-old lad like myself.