You don't have to look hard to find an article about the drastic changes that are happening on earth. Every week there is a new article about this glacier melting faster, a new discovery about how even more warming is expected than usual, or a report on some car bombs in the Middle East. Then you can watch the movies "Closer" and "Syriana" in order to get a nice cynical view of personal relationships and the current international political economy, respectively. These are all things to which I have been exposed as of late in my superbly isolated home.

It's amazing just how much perspective and attitude change life. If you were to only have access to those media listed above the world would have a pretty nasty taste to it. But with a different palette of colors the world, including all of your problems, can completely transform.

I speak for the people I know my age when I say that life after college is no fairytale. We are now exposed to just a little more of the elements, to vulnerability, and a much greater chance of loneliness. This is the time that we are really forced to grow. College was like a big all-day, all-night nursery school. We were never too far from our friends unless we locked ourselves up in our rooms and never came out (which happened to a number of us, especially during our senior year).

The common response seems to be to seek more of what we have lost. Law school or grad school of some sort seems to be a popular choice. With grad school you can hit three birds with one stone: a new community of young people, the feeling of being productive, and learning something new (and debt/poverty forces recent graduates to be productive even after grad school is finished). Friends of mine have accomplished some of the same things by moving to the same city together and working. Life alone seems intolerable, especially after we've been accustomed to just the opposite problem.

But maybe all we need is a little change in perspective. But I suppose that won't be enough in the end. Was it always like this for people leaving college? Why do they even have college if it creates such an emptiness after it is completed? I feel like no one warned me of these things. They don't teach us this at high school and they certainly don't teach us this at college. If we were lucky though, we heard it from recent graduates who dared to venture out of the grasp of their college friends. I guess I am one of them. But even if I warn you it will do nothing to prevent the loss unless you clutch to your friends and move to a city together. Run along!