There is a famous scene in the film “The Graduate” in which the listless young protagonist, played by Dustin Hoffman, is ambushed by a family friend at his college graduation party for questioning.

“What are you going to do now?” the family friend asks.

“I was going to go upstairs for a minute,” he tells her, misunderstanding the question.

“No, I meant with your future,” she explains. “Your life.”

“Well, that’s a little hard to say,” he says.

Forty years have passed since this film premiered. Dustin Hoffman and “The Graduate” have become icons of the Baby Boomer generation. Yet, taking a look at Loyola’s class of 2008, this bit of dialogue seems like a lot more than a cultural relic.

“The fundamental problem, actually, is that I have no idea what I’m going to do,” psychology senior Andrew Matson said with a laugh of his upcoming graduation.

Matson is 22 now, and has been in class since preschool. Now, he said, it is time for him to identify his real passions and ambitions.

“I haven’t had any real time to sort of self-actualize. As soon as I was old enough to consciously think, I was thrown into school,” Matson said. “Really what I would like to do after college is make enough money to eat and take care of my physiological needs.”

Matson said that if he eventually goes on to graduate school, he wants to be sure that’s what he wants to do before sinking thousands of dollars into it.

“Now that I’m done with college, my parents aren’t forcing me to do anything … so I’m not,” Matson said.

the teaching tactic

Although they may not ever have made a poster about it, teaching is on the minds of many students graduating this year, as is evident in the increase in applications to programs like Teach for America and teachNOLA.

“We have people that come in with varying degrees of their future plans,” said Tom Hayes, Teach for America’s recruitment director for Louisiana. “People from both sides of the spectrum find the experience adds insight and helps give them direction.”

Hayes speculated that part of the reason Loyola’s class of 2008 has been so responsive to the program is because of the required reading for their class as freshmen: Jonathon Kozol’s “Savage Inequalities.” He also suggested that it may be a reaction to their experiences with Hurricane Katrina.

Nine students have already been accepted into the program this semester from the first three recruitment deadlines, and more are expected once the students admitted from the final deadline are announced April 18.

Psychology senior Joe Goddu, who has been accepted into the program, said he signed up for Teach for America because he wanted to volunteer to help the city’s broken school system, and because he knew he wanted to take two years off before going to graduate school for psychology.

“I wasn’t ready to set those gears in motion,” Goddu said. “Because I’m young I wanted an opportunity to do something I won’t be able to after grad school.”

Adjusting to the ‘real world’

Roberta Kaskel, director of Career Development at Loyola, isn’t surprised that seniors are feeling pressured. Some of that pressure, she said, is simply part of being a senior in college, and some of it comes with the territory of a liberal arts education.

“Liberal arts students tend to be attracted to industries that only hire when there’s a need,” Kaskel said. Since there is no solid pattern of hiring, it’s harder for liberal arts seniors to plan ahead, hence the increased anxiety.

But at the same time, Kaskel said, the flexibility learned from a liberal arts education can pay off in relating to yet another source of pressure on this generation of graduates: the increasing instability of the job market.

“But in all likelihood a professional entering the workforce today is likely to change jobs eight to 10 times by the time you’re 35. And today changing jobs may also mean changing types of industries,” Kaskel said.

Loyola’s new Career Development Center, which Kaskel leads, is working to alleviate some of the pressure of planning out those “next few years.” Until this year, the center was only an offshoot of the Counseling Center, but now, armed with a full staff, a $55,000 grant from the provost and a number of new Internet resources, the center is ready to start helping seniors ease through this transitional period.

Loyola alumnus Blaise Dillingham has made the leap into the working world and lived to tell the tale.

“The transition into the real world is not as different or difficult as it may seem,” said Dillingham, a 2007 music business graduate. “I mean trying to find a job always sucks, but once you have it life seems pretty normal.”

Dillingham now works for a Chicago video production company called Teletech Video, but when he first arrived in the city he knew almost no one and had no job lined up.

He admitted it was somewhat scary at first, but said that in the end it was nothing he couldn’t handle. His plans were as flimsy as could be, and yet soon enough he had an apartment and a steady job in a field that interests him.

Kaskel’s generation had to pick a career and stick with it, she said, whereas the new job market is fluid.

“I’m a little envious,” she admitted, “I think your generation might be the one that gets it right about striking the balance between work and life.”

Kevin Corcoran can be reached at [email protected].