Thanks, MJ.

Let's begin today's therapy session with a few words from Michael Jackson. Please allow 5:45 for this masterpiece to really hit you because, trust me, you'll want to hear all his whoops! and ows! to really understand this blog (Feel free to raise your hands, close your eyes and let your feet thump to the power of MJ):

You are not alone.

Now that the mood is set and we have that 1995 classic running through our minds, I can rightfully begin today's thoughts. Technically, my thoughts come from Wednesday while I was reading the front page of the Oregonian I picked up from a cafe. The day's largest headline, while not bannering the top of the page, screamed in blocky bold font: "New grads in record debt." Subhead: "Earning ability during a recession isn't enough to get ahead of college loans."

I am not alone, indeed. While I am lucky enough to have graduated from UP without student loans (Apparently 63 percent of the 2008 Pilot alumni are saddled with some form of student debt), I am, as the newspaper implies, "getting a tough reality check [with] the toughest job market in decades." In fact, the article cites that "national unemployment rates for college graduates ages 20 to 24 rose from 7.6 percent in 2008 to 10.6 percent his year," according to a report by The Project on Student Debt, part of the Berkeley-based Institute for College Access & Success.

In a bittersweet manner, it is comforting to know that there are others out there exactly like me: degree-toting superstars sitting -- gratuitously, of course -- in underemployed jobs, itching to do something meaningful with our lives (Sing it to me MJ!) but unable to find the person or company to let us or help us do it. It's sweet because, I am not alone but it's bitter for the same reason too. If my fellow alumni are anything like me, they're getting hungrier and hungrier (literally and metaphorically speaking) for something bigger and better and are stepping up their games in order to satiate that hunger.

Perhaps, in the long run, because of our youthful drives, my generation will wind up doing really fantastic things in the future. We don't have to be, like a business journal reported last week, the newest 'lost generation' that is going to be worse off than our parents' generation (Not that they're living sheisty lives or anything) in terms of financial stability and overall net earnings. We don't have to maintain these less-than-ideal lifestyles. We don't have to settle for underemployment. We don't have to settle, period.

But until that day of unsettling presents itself on my calendar, I have Michael to get me through those nights. It's too bad he was just so creepy looking in '95. Definitely not his hay-day (May he rest in peace).