Goodbye college. Hello life.

When Kristen Gustafson got her first job out of college at a small publishing company in Virginia, she was so excited to be making a salary – one that seemed huge compared to the $60 she earned in a good week of work-study at school– that she rushed to the mall. "I managed to spend my entire first paycheck in an afternoon," she says with a laugh.

Shortly afterward, on her first night at her new apartment, her car was towedbecause she unwittingly parked in someone else's assigned spot. It was a stressful, expensive evening, Ms. Gustafson remembers: She initially thought her car had been stolen, her phone wasn't hooked up yet, and she realized how far away from home she was when she finally reached the police, spelled out her Massachusetts license plate, and the officer began repeating it to her: "Y as in Yankee?"

She can laugh now – four years later – but that night Gustafson discovered that life after college doesn't always have the rosy hue painted by commencement speeches. Dr. Seuss's "Oh, the Places You'll Go" may be a popular graduationgift – but who knew those places might include parents' base- ments, a job with unfathomable office politics, or a new city where they get lost trying to find the grocery store.

Suddenly, Mom and Dad are no longer picking up the bills, and half a dozen dormmates can no longer be counted on for a midnight pizza run. The realization hits: "I have to pay my own bills and fix my own food!"

An anthropology major who just defended an honors thesis on decoding cultural speech signifiers may discover that he or she knows little about deciphering workplace culture, navigating a new city, or understanding the nuances of HMOs, 401(k)s, and W-4s.

The lack of guidance for new graduates, along with her own experiences, prompted Gustafson, a 1998 graduate of Stonehill College in Easton, Mass., to write "Graduate!" (Capital Books, $14.95), a guide to the ins and outs of the post-college years. The book's topics range from paying taxes and buying a car to advice on meeting new people, what to ask a prospective roommate or landlord, and how to stock a kitchen.

To research the book, Gustafson sent out e-mail queries to all the recent graduates she knew, and was stunned by the response. "Everybody had a story," she says, "everybody had advice. The same issues kept popping up: housing issues, money issues. 'Do I go to grad school?' 'I moved back in with my parents and it's awful....' "

One of the biggest issues wasn't one Gustafson had anticipated: how tired people were. In college "you get all these breaks in the day, vacations, long weekends," she says. "Suddenly you're in the working world, and you don't have the luxury of taking a nap after lunch."

Gareth Jones, who graduated from Dartmouth College in 1999, can attest to that. He remembers his first day of work at a consulting firm in San Francisco. It was a gorgeous fall day, not a cloud in the sky – the kind of afternoon he might have skipped class to enjoy back in college. "It was 2, and I was like, 'I'm exhausted. I got here at 8. How much longer do I have to stay?' " The frustration helped Mr. Jones learn more about time management than he ever did in college – and he now goes to bed early on Friday night so he can rise with the sun on Saturday and enjoy precious time outdoors.

When Amy Merritt graduated from Princeton last May with a major in architecture and urban planning and a minor in finance, she thought she had it all figured out: the right degrees, the right job, the right city, the right roommate, the right apartment.

Unfortunately, things weren't so simple. "Not one thing has worked out like I planned it," Ms. Merritt says ruefully.

She'd signed on for an investment banking position in midtown Manhattan, but was placed in a different department, which had no other young workers. Then, the new job's downtown location made her carefully selected apartment less practical.

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