W H A T is this mystery book about?

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This book is about the horrid existential crisis that naturally occurs around the time of college graduation. Or, if you’re like me, you weep about this drunkenly at parties in September of your senior year. “We are graduating?! <cry cry, ugly face forms> “This is horrible! We have to say goodbye to everyone and this beautiful campus?!” <tears, tears, snot drips> “And I am supposed to find a husband, a career, and somehow be able to afford a car and a laptop?!” <boyfriend is gently escorting me out of the party, phoning in my best friend because he is emotionally inept and cannot handle my sobbing, conspires to hand me off to her>. College is a beautiful ocean of wonderful friends, emotionally deficient boyfriends, free flowing alcohol, parties, learning, and the soothing assuredness that you are doing exactly the right things, just like all your peers. You went to a great college, finished freshman year, sophomore year, got good grades, and so on, as it has always been since the first day of kindergarten. 

Then, suddenly, the warm vacation sea of vocational structure dries up, and you are left on the ground, soaked, standing on sand. The sand you stand on is the major you chose, with the GPA you earned, and somehow, at graduation, you are expected to make an adult life out of this wet sand. Your friends are also standing on their little piece of earth, but their careers and their pursuits of partnerships make them only sort of reachable, and the side by side comparisons and shared paths no longer apply between industries and goals. And what even are your career goals? Romantic goals? You are supposed to marry and live with one of these things called boyfriends? Just him and you in an apartment? When you speak he only grunts! This cannot be! When you work a 9-5, you realize that your career choice will consume the majority of your waking hours. If you choose wrong, you are doomed to crawl through the darkest tunnel on earth: a corporate tunnel that does not end until your menses does. Each day you have just enough time to commute home, eat something, watch one - two TV shows, and wake up to do it all again. Everything is high stakes. And no adult authority figure seems to notice or care. They simply pat your head and say, “You’ll figure it out. It’s great that you graduated!” This book is about solving all these problems, external and internal. I am the adult authority figure who cares, and has a doctoral level lifesaver to throw you. 

 

 

 

                                                                                         Dr. Hecht

 

 

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