But flash forward two years later and her plans have changed. At 24 years old, she lives at home with her mother and two sisters in a modest apartment in Andover, Massachusetts.

“I thought I had a clear vision of what kind of career I wanted and how I wanted to go about going after it,” she said. “But moving back in with my mom made sense at the time and you have to adapt in this kind of economy.”

Collier is part of the “Boomerang Generation,” a name given to the scores of young adults who are moving back in with mom and dad post-graduation. Unable to find jobs in an economic downturn, more and more college graduates are returning home.

According to a Pew Research Center report, the highest number of young adults are moving back home since the 1950s. In fact, last year, eight out of 10 graduates moved back home, according to a poll conducted by consulting firm Twentysomething Inc.. Some enrolled right into graduate school, others criss-crossed the country desperate for work.

Meanwhile, 54 percent of young adults under the age of 25 moved back home, hoping against hope for an economic turnaround.

“The rise in the boomerang phenomenon illustrates the effect the recession and the weak economy are having on young adults,” said Kim Parker, a senior researcher at Pew and the author of the study to The Christian Monitor. “Young adults were hit particularly hard in the job market and are having to delay reaching some basic financial milestones of adulthood because of this.”

Sam Dreyer, a recent graduate of George Washington University, said moving back home with mom and dad was a smart solution to pinching pennies in a tough economy and an even tougher job market.

“It’s hard, because when you first graduate, you want to get out into the world,” he said. “But you start to realize that there are bills to pay and loans hanging over your head, and sometimes you have to just buckle down and do what’s best financially.”

Of those living at home, some 78 percent say they’re feeling optimistic about their living arrangements, according to the Pew study, and 24 percent say it’s even been good for their relationships with their parents.

Jaime Bennett, a 2009 graduate from the University of Vermont, said after she moved back to her hometown of Tilton, N.H., the once-rocky relationship she had with her mother became a close friendship again.

“My Mom and I fought constantly in the couple of years prior to me going off to UVM,” Bennett said. “But since I moved back in, we’ve had the time to get to really know each other again and just be friends again. I think it’s been better for the both of us.”

Bennett said she now works for her mother’s accounting firm.

Other grads say that the free time has allowed them to pursue their professional dreams, including Marc Crossley, a 2010 graduate of the University of Connecticut and a self-described entrepreneur in the developmental stages of building his own web design services group.

“It used to be that you graduate college, you apply to your first job and you work a nine-to-five job to make money,” Crossley said. “But nowadays, the beauty about this kind of situation is that you have the freedom to make a job for yourself. I know friends who’ve gone on to start their own companies, do volunteer work, travel Europe. There’s more to post-grad life than paying the bills.”

But paying the bills is always a worry for graduates such as Gregg Doyle, who graduated this winter with a degree in business administration from Rivier College. By graduating a semester early, he said he thought he would have a head start on the rest of his class, but some three months later, he’s still jobless.

“I’ve applied to anywhere between five and ten jobs a day, and I’m only now hearing back from a few employers for interviews,” Doyle said.  “In school, your professors reassure you that things will work out. But that’s pretty tough when you’re applying everywhere and not getting any job offers.”

For now, Collier said she has postponed her ambitious career plans of becoming a director/writer for films and has pursued her dream through other venues. In the past twelve months alone, she said she has juggled two to three part-time jobs at a time, working as a sales associate in retail stores and barista in the local café, as well as several internships and freelance blogging gigs.

“Don’t stop when you get rejected,” Collier said. “It’s really easy to get discouraged in this economy, but you have to keep fighting.”

The post The Boomerangers: Why More College Grads Are Moving Back Home appeared first on NextGen Journal.

Spring break is a time to let loose and enjoy yourself (especially after those grueling midterms), but before you board that airplane bound for Bermuda, take the time and read these safety tips. Even if you only remember one or two, it will help reduce your chances of becoming another spring break statistic.

Research the Destination

You might have a hotspot destination in mind when you book your trip this year, but do the research before you board that flight. For example, experts have advised spring break travelers to avoid certain areas in Mexico for years. For starters, check The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website for travel notices and security memos. Read up on any current health issues relevant to your vacation spot and make sure you’re organized with your travel documents before you board your flight. Follow suit and book tours through a student travel agency when you arrive, like Lehigh University senior Andrew Durkin.

“I went last year with StudentUniverse,” Durkin said. “They help you book with tour operators and travel deals.”

Limit Alcohol Intake

You may be tempted to toss back those margaritas while sunbathing in Mexico, but it goes without saying that you shouldn’t let it go too far. Andrew Guglielmi was a 19-year-old student at Ohio University when he fell and died from a hotel balcony while on a spring break trip in Panama City over ten years ago. According to his parents, Guglielmi had been binge drinking and had a significant blood-alcohol content.

Jamie Blynn, a senior from UMass Amherst, said to watch where and when you drink as much as how much you drink.

“Be careful of day drinking,” he said. “It can catch up with you a lot easier, especially if you’re out in the sun and forgetting to drink water.”

If drinking alcohol is part of your break, remember that it can impair your judgment and actions. Just this month, three sorority sisters from Bowling Green State University were on their way to airport for a spring break trip to the Dominican Republic when they were hit and killed by a drunk driver.

Don’t Trust Strangers

It sounds like typical advice mom or dad yelled at you as you entered the gate at the airport, but it’s all the more important when you’re traveling. Bovey Zhang was a senior from University of California when he went missing on a Carnival cruise to Mexico over spring break last year with his girlfriend and two friends. According to local Mexican authorities, he was reported to have washed away at sea on March 23.

To avoid horror stories like this one, use a buddy system. Amanda Baker, a senior from Boston College, said splitting the travel bills with her three sorority sisters is cheaper and safer.

“I went on a trip to Florida last year with my roommates,” Baker said. “We were out clubbing and one of us went off to hook-up with a random guy. She didn’t have a cellphone for the trip, so when we didn’t hear from her, we got really scared. For this trip, our group will be sticking together and staying in touch.”

The post Safe in the Sun: Safety Tips For Spring Break appeared first on NextGen Journal.

Slackers coast through their classes, opt for the Friday night football game over a study session at the library, and often find it all too easy to push that assignment off another day, another hour, even another minute. But a study recently released by CBS News may mean more bad news for college slackers post-graduation.

Slackers are at a higher risk of finding themselves unemployed, living back home with parents, and swamped in credit card debt by the time graduation rolls around. These are just some of the findings generated by a new study that was conducted by the same researchers who found that 45 percent of students showed no significant improvement in the key areas of critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing by the end of their sophomore years.

The study was part of a book titled Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses. The researchers, including co-author and NYU sociology professor Richard Arum, determined “slackers” to be the college graduates who scored in the bottom quintile, according to the results of a widely used test called the Collegiate Learning Assessment, or CLA.

According to new research, academic underachievers are three times more likely to be unemployed (9.6%) compared to top students (3.1%), are nearly two times as likely to be living at home with parents (35%) compared to these same peers (18%) and are more likely to have significant credit card debt at 51%, as opposed to 37%.

Arum blames a culture at colleges and universities that values research over good teaching, but he also points a finger at “slacker” students who intentionally enroll in easier courses and study less. ”It’s not the case that giving out more credentials is going to make the U.S. more economically competitive,” Arum said in an interview with CBS. “It requires academic rigor … You can’t just get it through osmosis at these institutions.”

Heather R. Huhman, a career advisor and founder of the website ComeRecommended.com, says that slacking off in college can be much more than procrastinating on finals or skipping classes and can haunt you beyond your college years. “The effects of slacking off while in college can not only negatively impact your current academic standing, but your eligibility for an internship or job in the future,” she said. “In your academics, slacking off even slightly can perpetuate a poor work ethic and may deter professors from writing recommendations or acting as a reference on your behalf. For career prospects, internships often require a minimum 3.0 GPA, and may not accept a student with a poor performance in coursework.”

“I’ve had friends who worked hard, completed internships, and connected with their professors before graduating, and now they’ve gone on to be pretty successful,” said Xander Ditzel, a senior graduating this spring from the University of New Hampshire. He says the study confirmed what he is already observing among his peers in post-grad life. “I’ve also had friends who glided through, and nowadays they aren’t doing as well as they’d hoped. [The study is] not surprising, I guess, is what I’m trying to say.”

Mahlet Seyoum, a graduate of Stanford University, objects to the study’s findings in her article, “Slacking or Studying: Do Undergrads Really Learn in College?,” saying that the college culture is often misinterpreted as “slacking off.” “As a recent graduate who maintained a very healthy sleeping schedule and Facebook habit through my years of college, I beg to differ,” she said. “Yes, I spent a lot of time on Facebook. Yes, I sometimes slept until noon on weekdays when I had a 9am class. Yes, I used the university lawn as my personal tanning bed. But, I also gained a breadth of knowledge until then unknown to me — within my first quarter I’d completed a 10-person seminar on European colonialism, a survey course on African-American literature, and Advanced Calculus.”

Seyoum noted in her article that, inevitably, choosing your higher education is an investment, “College can be as easy or difficult as you make it – that’s the beauty of non-compulsory education. Yes, you can pay $40,000 a year to lounge on your university’s lawn and tan, but that investment can also go toward four of the most intellectually stimulating years of your life. It’s your choice.”

So how can you get better motivated as a student?

Huhman offers a few tips: “Take note of what eats up your time the most, whether it’s social media, TV, or socializing with friends. Then, make to-do lists and absolute deadlines for each task you have. Lastly, remember that being realistic and relaxed about your situation will do more good than panicking and being self-critical.”

The post New Statistics Mean Bad News for College Slackers appeared first on NextGen Journal.

Four years ago, I was a freshman in college. It was 2008, and, as part of the post-9/11 generation, I was excited at the prospect of change. Change in 2008 came in the form of a fresh-faced, relatively young candidate running for the presidential office. He was a U.S. Senator from Chicago – charismatic in both his manner and his rhetoric. And his name was Barack Obama.

Having been born, raised, and educated in the Granite State, you could say that I’m well-accustomed to the hype of living in a major stop along the presidential campaign trail, but I didn’t realize at the time that my hometown would be a landmark in political history.

Earlier that year President Obama addressed a sizable crowd of high school students (some of which included my friends and classmates) and their families standing elbow-to-elbow in the stands at my rival high school – Nashua High School South’s – polished gymnasium. It was after his defeat in the New Hampshire Democratic primary, and it was the year of my high school graduation when he delivered his now-famous “Yes, We Can” speech.

I realize now as a senior looking back that I, and many of my fellow classmates, had fallen in love with an image and a catchy slogan (“Yes, We Can”).

I compare these feelings to a sentiment felt by another generation- more specifically, my father’s generation, who came of age during the ‘60s. My father was a student in high school. He was fifteen, and it was the first presidential election he could really get excited about.

My father says he remembers watching the debates between John F. Kennedy and his opponents. It was exciting – the prospect that a candidate who was so young, so ambitious with promises to get an American on the moon in the next ten years – could possibly be elected president. He remembers watching his inaugural speech and hearing that now-famous phrase, “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.” It was the youth of America that pulled JFK through, and, had my father been old enough, he says all the time how he would have voted for him.

But my father was crushed –along with the rest of the country– when President John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas, Texas, a mere two years into his presidential term. In the election of Goldwater v. Johnson, my father was disillusioned with his choices. By this time, John F. Kennedy had been assassinated, along with his brother, Bobby Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr. The country was disillusioned, and my father’s classmates in college took to the streets in riots to protest President Nixon and the war in Vietnam.

I see several similarities between my father’s generation and our own, between the ‘60s and a post-9/11 world. Now, in the present time for the 2012 campaign, the hype buzzing around our state’s primary has proved to be just as intense as four years ago, and the GOP candidates are pulling out all the stops. Mitt Romney stopped at Milford’s Red Arrow 24-Hour Diner, a hangout spot frequented by my circle of friends for late-night coffee and scrambled eggs.

Kennedy has continued to be revered in my Boston-born family, and my father cries every time he sees footage of the funeral procession with Jackie’s face looking somber and strong, and little three-year-old John, Jr. saluting his father’s casket.

However, my generation has become very disillusioned with President Obama, who has not delivered on his promises.

This election, I am in the sad state where I’m not willing to endorse one candidate over the other. As a voter, I think it’s important to see the candidates for who they really are and not always who they say they are. I don’t think it’s time for finger pointing (goodness knows we’ve had plenty of that in the past four years); I think it’s time we reunite, instead of blindly allying ourselves to one party or the other.

Looking back, would I have made the same decision four years ago? Answering honestly, probably yes. What I’ve learned from my vote in 2008 is to avoid getting swept up in optimism, that a healthy dose of cynicism is – generally speaking – a good thing. What Mitt Romney and Ron Paul and Rick Santorum are all saying is very much like the sweeping rhetoric we heard four years ago. That’s something that I believe some of my classmates often forget. It’s not a well-spoken Republican who will fix the mistakes made under a badly-led Democratic presidency, nor will a well-spoken Democrat fix the mistakes made under a badly-led Republican presidency. That’s why I’m a registered Independent.

Come November, when I’m standing in that enclosed ballot box, I can’t say for certain how my vote will sway. Will I vote to re-elect President Obama or elect one of the many GOP candidates running in this election? If there’s one thing I’ve learned from politics, it is this – I won’t ever again fall prey to optimistic party pandering or, rather, the pandering to a disillusioned nation.

The post New Hampshire Young Voices: A Haze of Uncertainty appeared first on NextGen Journal.