Whenever I offer career advice to students, I tell them that journalism is a great profession because, given enough time to read up on the subject, we can write on almost anything we like. Of course in the midst of a recession, such advice may be deemed useless--after all, is anyone even hiring? A colleague tells me that until recently his advice to students was, "Whatever you do, don't go to law school." Now he says, "Have you ever thought about law school?"

The job market is that bad. Even now in November, months after graduation, there are people with newly minted degrees who remain unemployed. Everywhere they turn, either companies aren't hiring, or they're looking for applicants with greater experience. And the words "Don't worry, you'll find something. It'll all work out," provide little solace. Instead, jobless graduates are left feeling desperate, unwanted, embittered, and resentful.

At least that's how I felt upon graduating from Georgetown in 1995. Back then, the job market was also grim--for an international relations major. Although the campus career center posted job listings, almost all of them were in the fields of investment banking and accounting: CS First Boston, Arthur Andersen, Andersen Consulting, Bain, Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns. Finance majors were entering their senior semesters with business cards, signing bonuses, and clothing allowances. Meanwhile, my initial excitement over a job posting with the words "international diplomacy" had been reduced by the fine print that read, "accounting majors only." (Worse off were Russian majors, who had to read notices explicitly stating, "No Russian majors.")

That summer of 1995 was a long one: sending out résumés, making fruitless follow-up calls, talking to a headhunter, and waiting for hours at a temp service--the receptionist forgot I was there, and by the time she remembered, my interviewer had left for the day. Once at Mass, during the offering of petitions such as "so-and-so's grandfather who is dying," I was tempted to blurt out, "That I may find a job, we pray to the Lord!"

Around Labor Day, I decided to accept a part-time job as a research assistant at a defense consulting firm. The boss had a famously short temper and gave a frightening stare (aided by his crooked eye). He was a wicked man. Just thinking about the place, a nervous pit is forming in my stomach. Things finally hit rock bottom when my boss asked me to recopy his son's science project to make it neater--the boy was in the sixth grade at the time. (From what I hear, he later went to Harvard.)

About the time I took that job, the Washington Post ran an article under the headline "Pressure Point: As Summer Fades, the Heat's Still on Jobless College Grads." It was comforting to know I wasn't alone. In fact, it resonated so strongly with me that I saved the section for posterity. Six months later, in February 1996, I finally landed a full-time position as a staff assistant at this magazine, and I've never looked back. But not too long ago, sorting through old papers, I came across the Post story again, and memories of that depressing summer and fall came flooding back. (Now yellowed and frayed, the section includes a review of the movie Mortal Kombat.)

Rereading it, I was reminded that one of the people the reporter interviewed was a fellow Georgetown student. David Sprindzunas, we were told, was "juggling two unpaid summer internships at Virginia firms" and had spent ten months sending out 50 résumés without success. Said David, "I'm feeling the pressure of having worked a summer and not gotten a job out of that, and that means now there's a lot of pressure to have something fall into place immediately--because each month here in D.C. means more rent and money lost, not gained." He also told the Post that he wouldn't consider "taking a job that's too far from his intended field."

Fourteen years later, David is a real estate agent here in Washington. When I tracked him down last week, he told me that not long after the article ran he landed a position at a French consulting firm. He later went into private banking but decided by the end of 2001 to try his hand at real estate. "It's been a good match thus far," he says. As a sales associate at Coldwell Banker, David jokes that he has managed to build for himself a "very mini real estate empire."

For a college graduate unemployed in November, it might be hard to believe that things work out in the end, but they really do for the most part. As for my old boss, he ended up doing a stint in jail for tax evasion. I couldn't think of a happier ending.

VICTORINO MATUS