1999 and 2000: watching older friends graduate into jobs that paid a then astonishing $80-100k, on the strength of some summer internships and part-time gigs 2

1999 and 2000: watching older friends graduate into jobs that paid a then astonishing $80-100k, on the strength of some summer internships and part-time gigs 2001: summer internship at Microsoft testing Office for Mac, looking forward to bright future after graduation, hearing from recent grads that it wasn’t quite as rosy as before… 2002: getting a government contracting job writing Java unit tests and user manuals in a musty basement in a DC suburb, and crying a bit… with relief. Watching classmates with better grades than mine nervously eyeing private student loan repayment schedules while anxiously waiting to hear back from defense contractors they reluctantly applied to.