You also have a bit more freedom than the 9-5 grunts and it is not such a horrible thing. Life is to be enjoyed and if your field of study is enjoyable it will come around. In the meantime, that feeling of not really accomplishing anything – most of us have that, even when we are. But, you folks are saddled with unreasonable debt for your troubles which is just wrong on so many levels and it pushes you to almost feel like failures when you are really so very much like previous generations in thoughts and hopes.

Our very silly, but also strangely wonderful, society – and that in Europe – we are collapsing on our greed at the same time that many things are getting easier to do in a faster way. So, there is not much room for new folks to get “real” jobs without creating them. It is not the recession, though, it is growing pains. It is a shift. In the “good old days” that never existed, American industry was protected by high tariffs making importing goods far more expensive. The market at home was huge and there was less need to export – plus a lot of our export ventures did not go very well. So, jobs were plentiful and even with union labor costs, the prices seemed reasonable because the imports were so dear. We now insist on full free trade and we mostly have it so the cheapest run economies are wide open for American investment and local labor to make products we do not really need anyway. This artificially drops our expectation of what goods actually cost so we have grown accustomed to buying far more than we need and still crave more. Yet, we do not want to buy if the price point seems unfamiliarly high.

In the interim we were told that labor unions make America less competitive so we are doing our best to dismantle them in order to provide cheap labor like they do in developing nations even though that is impoverishing and depressing our own society. We are, in short, learning that we cannot have our cake and eat it too. But we do not like the lesson. So we keep trying to change the curriculum.

It is hitting you like a ton of bricks because even though it was on its way in your parents’ day and later, it has actually arrived now. We cannot afford who we want to be and who we have been. Yet we have a very correct, in my view, desire to protect our weakest and most vulnerable and this is a growing group. So, the reasons we are fraying at the edges are actually partly noble – we refuse to abandon those in need. Sadly, it is partly disgraceful – in that we went to war without figuring out in advance how to pay for it. American history scholars and buffs will explain that this is precisely the impetus of the American Revolution. The taxes we did not want to pay were to cover war debts.

I think your point about being more creative is true; but also figuring out how to monetize that creativity in a world where – your generation is wonderful about this – we want to protect the environment and do the right thing and not harm other people or animals in the process. Every other “success” failed those tests – they came on the backs of slaves and underpaid workers and global environmental hardship,or financial shenanigans etc. So, creative farming practices are really taking off and historic preservation is a growing field and forensic accounting is important. Cleaning up after the mess we left you is the future. At least for now.

Sorry for this long post – but you should know that while this has everything to do with you, you are not at all responsible and you were not unreasonable to believe what you believed when you went to school. However, you start where you are. Where you are is a totally different place from the one you thought it was. And, you do sound very smart and creative and resourceful so I am guessing you will do well, whatever path(s) you choose to follow.