Reading this article in the Wall Street Journal—while being informed fully of the situation —will make you want to beat your head against a wall. The job market has pretty well reached mythical status for recent college graduates; the “job market” was a place other generations did some minimal step-following in order to slip their educated way into a spot seemingly reserved for them. “Them” being the twenty-somethings who had followed procedure: graduated with decent grades in high school, taken all required standardized tests, gotten into colleges and universities, graduated with one or more degrees, etc.

I can’t imagine how pissed off the current generation (are we still on Y? When do we get to Z?) must be regarding their financial futures. They’ve been jumping through academic hoops since middle school in order to secure their spot in Careerland. And now, things don’t seem to be progressing according to plan. If’n I were a Gen-Yer (I’m Gen-X) I would be so done with adults and jobs and school and rules. There are going to be a lot of twenty-somethings living off the grid, far away on tropical islands, telling society to perform expletive-y things on itself.

Here’s the teensy smidge of silver lining…at the end of the article, there are a few lines that give recent grads another option (besides smashing their heads repeatedly against the Job Market Wall:

Others are opting to ride out the slump doing public service. At AmeriCorps, a nationwide community-service network, applications more than tripled to about 48,500 between November 2008 and March compared to the same time period a year earlier. Teach for America received 35,000 applications this year — 42% more than last year. About 70% of those were recent college graduates. Among the most common reasons people cited for applying, according to Teach for America, were poor job conditions and President Barack Obama’s call to public service.

Another alternative to unemployment or a low-paying job: Stay in school.

Graduate applications for 2007-2008 were up 8% nationwide compared to the year before, according to the most recent numbers from the Council of Graduate Schools. Schools such as Northwestern University and Harvard are already tracking double-digit increases this year.

College grads who went to graduate school instead of the job market during the early ’80s recession didn’t suffer the same wage losses, says Ms. Kahn, the Yale economist.

I love school, so I see no downside to sticking one’s head in the proverbial sand (grad school) and waiting the economic slumpiness out. There will be more student loan debts, but maybe there’s a way to keep the course load manageable enough to also work at the lame job you’re ridiculously overqualified for but it’s the only job you could find after months of searching. And, really, isn’t being in school the perfect excuse for having a crappy job and a cash-flow problem? I’m not kidding, I think I’ve found the perfect hiding place to wait out the Recession Boogeyman—a nice, long PhD with a crappy job on the side. It’s perfect.

Posted by Alexa Harrington