http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/01/f...ait-for-their-real-careers-to-begin.htmlGeneration Limbo: Waiting It Out
JENNIFER 8. LEE
New York Times
August 31, 2011
...
Meet the members of what might be called Generation Limbo: highly educated 20-somethings, whose careers are stuck in neutral, coping with dead-end jobs and listless prospects.
And so they wait: for the economy to turn, for good jobs to materialize, for their lucky break. Some do so bitterly, frustrated that their well-mapped careers have gone astray. Others do so anxiously, wondering how they are going to pay their rent, their school loans, their living expenses � sometimes resorting to once-unthinkable government handouts.
�We did everything we were supposed to,� said Stephanie Morales, 23, who graduated from Dartmouth College in 2009 with hopes of working in the arts. Instead she ended up waiting tables at a Chart House restaurant in Weehawken, N.J., earning $2.17 an hour plus tips, to pay off her student loans. �What was the point of working so hard for 22 years if there was nothing out there?� said Ms. Morales, who is now a paralegal and plans on attending law school.
Some of Ms. Morales�s classmates have found themselves on welfare. �You don�t expect someone who just spent four years in Ivy League schools to be on food stamps,� said Ms. Morales, who estimates that a half-dozen of her friends are on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. A few are even helping younger graduates figure out how to apply. �We are passing on these traditions on how to work in the adult world as working poor,� Ms. Morales said.
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Yikes.
