YOUNG ALUMNI
Life After Economic Death BY MANDY OAKLANDER ’06 n “What do you do when your industry tanks before you break into it,” I typed, “but not before the ink dries on your diploma?” After I tapped away the lead to my most recent article, I sat back at my desk and wondered if the words had been meant for me. I was writing my last piece for BusinessWeek in New York City, where I had been interning for the past six months. During my internship, McGraw-Hill decided to put BusinessWeek up for sale after 80 years of publishing, and by the time I left, it still remained without a parent company: a journalistic orphan. I could relate—few newsrooms were hiring. After spending my college career training for a dying industry, I too could easily end up journalistically homeless. And now, weeks before my final year at Northwestern, I was writing a story about fresh graduates who had to take
Pine Crest Baseball Ninth Annual Alumni – Varsity Game Alumni baseball players challenged the School’s varsity team in an annual summer game held in June. The varsity team won the game 9-8 over the alumni. Coach Patrick was the Homerun Derby winner for the second year in a row!
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Pine Crest Magazine Fall 2009
detours in their career paths to dodge the ruthless economy. When my editor assigned me the piece, he wanted me to search for the true gems of the Plan B grad crowd: those who had originally intended to go into consulting and instead opened a line of organic farms; those who couldn’t find a job on Wall Street and decided to work at a women’s shelter in India. In other words, he wanted the eccentrics, and I was responsible for tracking them down. I thought it would be impossible. But something funny happened after I began the relentless search for sources. When I sent e-mails to the career services departments at top business schools, my inbox was bombarded with contact information. When I talked to friends, they would instantly think of someone who fit. It turned out that the hemorrhaging economy was producing a great deal of creativity. My final cast of characters was astonishing: a business school grad who once aimed for a career in real estate now helps hazelnut farmers maximize profits in Bhutan; another MBA ditched the business world to become a professional rapper; a former cor-
porate jockey opted to open her own oliveoil boutique; a would-be product developer decided instead to climb Mount Kilimanjaro and help fund schools in Nepal. And, ironically, the story featured two Pine Crest alumni—Vance Aloupis ’01, a law school grad who acted on his dream of opening a career counseling service, and Robin Cherof ’05, an art history major who abandoned the pursuit of a museum job in search of a spot in a modern dance company. For months, all I heard were loud moans lamenting my generation’s curse of graduating into a bad economy. It seemed inevitable that we would all end up jobless. But the curious whisper of “what if?” echoed in the economic aftermath; the volatile job market meant that we could re-imagine our career paths. Because no job was guaranteed, we could truly be whatever we wanted. Suddenly, my choice to be a journalism major didn’t seem like such a professional death sentence. I left BusinessWeek without a job offer, but I reclaimed a feeling I hadn’t felt since high school graduation. Good economy or bad, we still have dreams. And now, I have proof that we can make them come true.
Back Row (left to right): Eric Halsey ’95, Matt Kurland ’05, David Abers ’11, Robert Harvey ’06, Todd Harrell ’96, Ted Karniewicz ’96, Joe Castaldi ’06, Angelo Castaldi ’09, Zack Kessinger ’11, Vance Aloupis ’02, Mark Gilbert ’74, Coach Paul Perri ’99 (Coach ’05-Present), Coach Glen Pierson ’95 - Present, and Coach Paul Pierson ’95 -’99 Middle Row (left to right): Coach Larry Kashdin ’04-Present, Coach Patrick ’04-’07, Phil Carafiello ’09, Ben Arkin ’11, Troy Wiggins ’08, Michael Schoenbrum ’09, Leon Legot ’10, Matty O’Connor ’10, Mike Zequeira ’08, Charlie Cobb ’93, Mario Cartaya ’03, Josh McMahan ’04, and Phil Lord ’05 Front Row (left to right): Steven Goldberg ’13, Alex Kashdin ’09, Brandon Wiggins ’06, Harrison Meister ’11, Dylan Smith ’11, Michael Pierson ’11, Chris Schaller ’10, Aaron Ever ’96, and Coach Semmie Taylor ’99 (Coach ’04 – Present)