"If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere," the song goes. But what if you can't make it?

At Yankee Stadium, they play "New York, New York" after every game; Liza Minnelli if they lose, Sinatra if they win. I remember hearing, after one of those early ALCS games, strands of Sinatra over the cheering crowd and thinking that I was like the Red Sox: a loser from New England in New York. What business did I really think I had coming here, anyway?

Back in August, I never thought it would take me this long. I thought, for sure, I'd have something by October, but I thought I was being perfectly realistic in setting a goal of employment by September 15th.

Back then, I still believed I'd get a job I wanted, so much so that I turned down two jobs that didn't seem right: too boring, too stodgy, not enough room for growth, etc. For a few weeks, I clung to the belief that those were the right choices, and maybe they would have been, if something great had turned up shortly thereafter. But it hasn't. Seventeen job interviews later (with two more scheduled on Monday) I am empty-handed. I am applying for things that aren't even remotely related to what I want to do with my life, or what I spent a good deal of money educating myself to do.

Actually, I didn't spend that money, my parents did. And this is probably one of the worst parts of my battle with unemployment: the realization that I am just another selfish brat wasting her parents money. I'm too good to move back to Plymouth? No, just too snobby to drive around the South Shore and return with my tail between my legs to TCBY to beg for some employment while I hope and pray my resume finds its way to the hands of some HR recruiter in a city somewhere.

I try and remind myself of the basic facts I've been told before: that it is very hard finding a job, that while expensive, my current lifestyle is cheaper than grad school, and that if I'm going to be selfish, this is the time in my life to do it.

Except I don't want to be selfish. I want to pay my own rent, and be able to buy my groceries without sending myself into credit rating nightmares. I want a job with benefit, to be able to pick out my own doctor and to buy a can of paint for my walls. I want to live in a world where basic cable isn't an insane luxury item to fantasize over some day, and where I don't have to make a call home just to pay the $37 I owe to ConEd for my utilities this month.

You see, I had this stupid idea that I was actually going to be successful. That getting into college and getting decent grades all those semesters wasn't just a fluke, and that I was more than just some parasitic kid who thought she was entitled to her own damn special world.

I'm almost afraid to go home for Thanksgiving. I don't want to see people's faces and watch as they wonder what exactly I've been doing with all my time in the city. I can hear it in my head: you graduated six months ago, dropped almost $7K on a summer course, conned your parents into helping you get an apartment, and you still haven't found a job? And even if it's not what they're thinking, it's probably what they should be. It's what I'm thinking anyway.

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