The hype has died. The whimsical fairy dust glamour of getting that cushy, case that stores the paper worth the four plus years of your life you will never see again has vanished. The pinnacle of moment excitement of finishing college and becoming an “adult” has dissipated into the stratosphere.

Now what?

No jobs? No luck? No money? What’s a new graduate to do? Move back home, obviously. But I think the financial crush has affected more than college graduates going home. A lot of us are gravitating to the one thing that seems the most like home for some kind of support.

The funny thing about having a FaceBook account is that I get the updates every now and then about my fellow graduating classmates, who I didn’t necessarily talk to but who felt the need to add me as their ‘friend’.

One in particular, was one of my superiors at the school run news organization. Through the entire semester I worked under him he was demanding, not very friendly and had the prospective that he was an amazing journalist who knew everything there was to know about being an editor and was going to be making serious cash when he graduated.

According to his FaceBook updates and mobile pictures he spends a majority of his time hanging out at the newsroom on the school campus. Which I guess makes sense… school … or the organizations we join is the ‘home’ we turn to when the real world isn’t ready for us yet.

But of course, the financial iffy-ness isn’t purely restricted to those caught in the post-grad world. Even people who are still in school and who have moved out of their parents’ house, those still in school looking for a job, and people not school but on on the job hunt have it tough.

I recently flew down to Los Angeles to help my best friend move back to San Francisco. After four months of independence and trying to secure some form of income he finally decided to cut his losses and move back home. Lucky for him, his old job in the city took him back. When I asked him if he was excited to get his old job back, he looked less than thrilled, saying, “It’s just a minimum wage job.” It boggled my mind that he wouldn’t be more thrilled to finally have some sort of income after four months of nothing.

I suppose having complete freedom and then losing the key to the castle is a bitter pill to take, even if you finally are getting some sort of stable income. I guess I can’t really say, considering I’m still building up my funds to make my great escape. But I’ll let you know when I do.
—Eming Piansay