He says: “large factors out of our control can ruin lives.” Like a federal government with its hands in everything. In one breath, it’s laissez-faire failure, in the next it’s the unfathomable caprice of “large factors” like a recession. It’s going to be all right, Pingry. We have to endure you, too.

Instead of making a celebrity out of one disappointed college graduate, the reporter could have done some real work and shown how college graduates faced the same job market in 1982 – and survived very well over the long run. I know a marketing graduate who found himself in 1982 “in a place that isn’t at all what you’ve been told to expect.” I know he didn’t sit around moaning “What was the point?”

When life gives you lemons, go use your marketing skills to build a niche and sell them. From what I read, Melissa’s job search didn’t involve any marketing skills other than doing what everyone else was doing.

My point is that college graduates emerge disappointed all the time. So what? Nobody should have promised this woman that a good life was a sure thing. Nobody should be allowing her to feel like a victim.