Graduation can be a scary time for seniors preparing to make their way in the world. Before this year’s seniors pack their bags and leave for opportunities elsewhere, I wanted to make one suggestion: Consider making New Orleans your home.

Growing up in the New Orleans metro area, it seems to me people here have always accepted the idea that if you are smart, ambitious and motivated, you will leave New Orleans and use the talents and the skills you’ve learned here to change the world.

That’s all fine and well, but right now, New Orleans needs you. New Orleans needs your intellectual capital, your idealism, your ideas, your energy, your back-breaking labor.

There are plenty of famous New Orleanians from the past who have traveled abroad and around the world increasing their fame and fortune. Later, they return to the city they love to raise their children and grandchildren and live out their golden years.

Unfortunately, New Orleans doesn’t have 10-20 years to wait for you to come back and to bring your money with you. It needs every warm body it can get to help bring good ideas to the table and work to make life here better. If not, we will all begin believing that the years of fighting with FEMA and the state of Louisiana for money and basic public services, such as electricity, were for naught. That things here truly will never change, and that we will all die a truly horrible death in the pits of ignorance and ineptitude that abounds here.

I spent most of my life wishing to move to a far away place – away from New Orleans and away from Louisiana. As a child, I imagined myself escaping to a big city on the east coast and living the chic urban life. Some place like New York or Los Angeles seemed appealing.

Only when I got a job on the West Coast in 2003 as a newspaper reporter did I truly learn to appreciate my hometown and what makes it special.

Hurricane Katrina changed everything for me. In the storm’s aftermath, New Orleans looked and operated like a war zone. The newspaper where I worked sent me home to cover the storm from the front lines.

When I returned to the West Coast after a week in “Katrina-land,” suddenly everything became clearer to me. If I wanted to help New Orleans, I needed to move back and be a part of the rebuilding of the “World’s Most Interesting City.” I realized you couldn’t have an interesting city without interesting people. The people here are what make this city a world treasure.

Unfortunately, lots of my friends did not return with me. Outside of college students, there is a real dearth of 20-something professionals here. I have one close friend from high school who still lives in New Orleans. I have a few acquaintances from college living here, but most of my other friends live elsewhere now.

Why is it so important to have young, working professionals living in New Orleans, you ask? It’s important because young people are the motor behind the machine. They keep a city vibrant. They haven’t been tarnished by the cynicism of the world and beaten down by its harsh reality. They still believe it’s not too late to change.

My friends tell me they would love to come home, but there just are not enough job opportunities here for young professionals. There’s not enough housing. The insurance rates are too high. The roadways are in disrepair. The crime rate is scary.

But at the same time, how can you make a place better if you don’t stay to help? It’s not easy, but it takes time to get things fixed. It also takes manpower. The houses and the roads don’t fix themselves.

It’s not easy living here, but if you were looking for the easy road, you probably wouldn’t have returned to New Orleans to attend Loyola following the hurricane. You could have chosen to transfer to another university. Yet, you chose to stick it out. You came back, and you finished.

That kind of attitude will get you far in life and will teach you a lot about yourself in the process.

If your main goal is to make lots of money, New Orleans is not the place for you. You can make a good living here, but New Orleans isn’t known for its workaholic attitude- like Washington D.C. or New York- but quite the contrary.

If you’re interested in culture, history, music and fun, then stick around. We still have a lot to offer. And if there’s something that’s missing, here’s your opportunity to create it.

Crystal Bolner is a graduate student in the College of Business and an administrative assistant in the School of Mass Communication.