Thanks to the economy, I have no future

My last post was a bit abstract, so here is a very real speculation on the state of my life after graduation.


After four years of learning, privilege, toil (however you choose to describe my college education), I am finally ready to enter society as a theoretically functional individual. In June 2009, I graduate. In my Panglossian fantasy, my parents and I celebrate, I receive a fellowship to study in China for a year, and then I move onto law school.


Given near-paralysis of the credit market, however, many of my fellow graduating students that would have entered the investment banking industry are now considering other options, like graduate school or fellowships. All of a sudden, my idyllic little pasture is overcrowded with starving sheep, as it were. Competition drives evolution; it drives the market. What emerges is a more efficient equilibrium. Competition is, essentially, a "good" thing.


But competition also causes profound instability and dislocation. And my lizard brain is intensely insecure about my survival. What is the back-up to my flimsy plans? The prospect of going home to live with my parents is frightening: disappointment and shame within an enclosed space would invariably lead to madness. I could find odd jobs here and there (assuming that Barnes and Noble would even hire a simultaneously overqualified and inexperienced college graduate), apply to law school, and wait out the year. I could pack up, move to Shanghai, and eke out a living tutoring English in China's new Gotham. Or simply live overseas as one of those disaffected young expatriates that populate Hemingway's novels.


Clearly, my speculation has reached the realm of fantasy. It got so bad that, while trying to have the same conversation with Rachel a few days ago, we ended up talking about launching crime syndicates -- planting poppies in the power-vacuum of post-war Afghanistan and the kind -- in lieu of legitimate post-graduation plans. We kid, of course, but it's a rather dark sort of humor.


And alright, I acknowledge that ultimately I am speaking from a privileged position, and that this rant veers on the melodramatic. My problem is not at all unique; it's one that all college graduates face. After investing so much (of my parents' money) into my (questionably productive) education, what do I do with my life that will validate my parents' sacrifice and my self-worth?