Making a debut in the real world as a 2011 college graduate was a far less glamorous affair than I and my fellow baccalaureates had hoped for. After blowing through college funds and accruing loans with an equivalent value to the homes we grew up in, it turned out that the only parties in need of our six-figure degrees were local restaurants offering part time shifts and the neighborhood families that we used to babysit for during high school.

The parents of a good friend of mine took out a second mortgage on their house to fund his Stanford degree in political science, and to their horror, he moved right back home 4 years later to work in a nearby bagel shop.

Every job posting was answered with thousands of applications, and as any business student can tell you, it’s all about supply and demand. In the case that someone was lucky enough to land a full-time office job, the trade-off for the privilege of “real” work experience usually meant taking a pay-cut from what could have been earned tending bar or waiting tables.