This just in from the State Department: California added 18,500 new jobs in March. Well I can only guess what kind of jobs those are. Walmart? Starbucks?

It’s three weeks before graduation and I have the job-seeking woes.

Here is the chaffing reality about higher education. I sat in exit loan counseling yesterday, where I realized that in six months I will be paying $300 a month for the next 15 years of my life. Or I could consolidate and pay $100 a month until I’m 50. Unfortunately, my $120,000 education won’t get me a job paying above $35,000 unless I become an accountant just like my… parents. No offense to the tax enthusiasts out there.

Desperately I’ve tried for the past two months to find a job so I don’t have to move back in with my parents, something I would consider without shame if jobs actually existed where they live.

The job hunt is a job itself. Resumes by email only go so far. “If you just meet with me,” I say, “I swear you’ll never want to let me go.”

“Seeking fearless assistant to two obnoxious coffee-addicts, who probably won’t learn your real name until you’ve been at the job for six months. Duties include taking the dog to yoga and finding a new quote every day with the word ‘success’ in it to attach at the end of every email.”

What are my options? My current life is a constant state of uncertainty. The world tells me I don’t have another year, another semester to figure it all out. They say follow your dream, but for someone with creative aspirations and no trust fund, being a part of that something called “art” sounds way too romantic these days.

It’s 9 a.m., and I’m getting ready for my third interview so far. Should I wear my black power-suit or the light-brown one that says “approachable”?

“Come work for our network, Nicole! We’ll only pay you $10 an hour, and sorry no benefits either, but you’ll get to be on the lot, and after you slave for a year and prove your worthiness to our cause then maybe, just maybe, we’ll hook you up with another department.”

Can I be sixteen again? This sucks!

Like a senior in high school, I spend the last days of classes in an anxious boredom. “Let’s get on with it already.”

I wonder if I’ll ever be able to live like a real adult in this town and move out of the hood into an apartment I call my own. No roommates. No ghetto birds at 3:00 in the morning hovering outside my window.

There is something terribly ironic about spending your entire college career building up knowledge and experience, only to fall back down to a place of subordination as soon as you graduate. In the working world, you’re a freshman all over again.

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Nicole Middleton was a senior lit major at USC. She’s a staff writer at P+P. Images of USC graduation revelry courtesy one of Nicole’s dranky pals.