Another thing I realized after college is that living? especially if you avoid NY/SF/DC? it doesn’t have to be that expensive. I lived in Philadelphia on $11,000, and while I was broke all the time, I also ate organic vegetables and drank decent unfancy beer and lived somewhere I liked and did not rack up credit card debt. I also had certain kinds of luck, but I don’t think it’s impossible to replicate – many, many people live in Philly (and other cities) on less than that.

That’s basically what I did after college: didn’t have a job, worked some crap (paralegal for a bully) and less crap (cooking, small-time organic garden work, grant-writing) jobs, all of them part-time, tutored physics, raked leaves, dog-sat, and meanwhile volunteered with one of the only 2 outdoor ed programs in Philadelphia. Eventually, I got a job with the other one because they knew Woodrock’s name.

I’d also recommend a short detour through route 1 before route 2 so that the unworldly undergrad can sample a few different venues in which she might want to develop her “very specific technical proficiencies” before she commits time and money to developing them. She might, in addition to that initial detour, even detour all the way through an academia-type grad school program if she was realistic about needing some professional training afterwards to return to creative and practical employment.

The other only thing that might improve this post is if it were written advice column style – as in “Grandpa Burke Tells the Rest of the World What to Do, Dammit!” (You said it, I didn’t . . . )

Being successful in Route 4 (Hanging out your own shingle) is likely to involve many of the same activities as Route 3 (Being a nuisance) and therefore involve many of the same risks. By the way, many folks might be energized by these activities. They are often called born sales people, which brings up an omission in your article; people’s personality in helping them get ahead in life and generally how suited they are to any given profession despite their formal training.

I believe younger folks especially don’t in general use a very powerful version of Route 5: Get a job (almost any one) preferably in a company with potential in an industry you would like to build your career in. Get promotions and be ready to move to other companies often to move up the ladder. Assuming you are good at what you do, you will be very successful in less than 10 years. The labor market is tight and will be for years. Use it to your advantage to move around and therefore up.

I don’t know how many fields this is true of, but in software and systems admin it’s possible: Free Software development groups, user groups, that kind of thing. If you’ve been an active volunteer in one of these groups for, say, a year, long enough for people to know your name and something of your work ethic, they can be very helpful in getting you into at least only a Somewhat Leftover job, and remain good people to be in touch with after a couple of years when you have your dues at the bottom of the ladder (in computing, in my geographical area, a year or two is still enough) and want in on something Cooler. There’s still an awkward moment when you go from “so how’s that code coming along?” to “so… anyone know of any entry-ish-level jobs?” but at least you’re not talking to strangers.