Post-Graduation Panic Attack

Name: Joe Unemployed

Skills: Word, Some Excel

Objective: Get a job using the stuff I learned in Business School



As Joe glanced between his latest bank statement and the cover letter on his screen, he wondered how much he could get for his computer on eBay.

Meet Joe Unemployed. Joe entered the Michael G. Foster School of Business two years ago by incredibly good luck and setting up a complex network of mirrors in all the examination rooms before each major exam.

Joe is pleasant enough, though has barely eked by the past two years on whining and good looks. He graduated a few weeks ago with a minimum 2.5 G.P.A. and realizes that he’s

1. $40,000+ in debt.
2. Soon to be unemployed from his student job.
3. In deep financial trouble, because after rent, bills, and daily Top Ramen allowance for the following month, he has only $36.70 left in his checking account.

Joe looks back at the past few years and wonders how he got into this predicament. Ah, yes. It might have had something to do with the fact that he didn’t visit this career center’s website sooner in the school year, or even better, visit the center to check out those career workshops on job hunting, resume, and interviewing tips.

Or maybe it was the fact that he had a hard time learning to say no to all those parties he went to over the years when he should have been studying for finals instead. And Joe never went to his professors’ office hours, so none of them even recognize his face, let alone know him by name. Good luck getting those very important letters of recommendations from any of my esteemed professors who know Joe as a slacker at best from angry peer group evaluations. Yeah. Definitely should have learned to say no.

Speaking of learning to say no, at that moment, Joe realized that he probably should have said no to that really nice man he met in the Quad four years ago who gave him a slice of pizza in exchange for signing up for a card. But that was before Joe took Econ 200.


“My current debt could have bought me at least 3000 pizzas!” Joe wailed, quoting a freshman Econ 200 lesson on opportunity costs.

Somewhere in the distance, in an obscure Seattle coffee shop where they give you too much java and not enough sugar, Joe’s former Econ 200 T.A. heard the anguished echo, paused in the middle of correcting a gargantuan stack of finals, and smiled. “I taught him well.”