-Congratulations, Class of 2009, you’ve just received your college degrees! If I were you, by now I’d be sick of everyone telling me how this is the worst job market in a generation and that my graduation is coinciding with near-certain apocalypse. I feel your pain, though, having graduated in 2001 during the dot.com collapse. When I got back from spring break in Acapulco my senior year, I had a voicemail informing me that the division of the company where I had lined up a full-time job no longer existed. Not the kind of news you want to hear when you’re hungover and sunburned. But fret not, my young apprentices, it’s not all bad. In my annual address to the nation’s graduates, I’d like to present you with some reasons why you’ll fare better in the real world than you think. Or at least fare better than your gloomy douchebag commencement speaker thinks.

-In today’s economy, thrift is the new bling. Which is good since you’ve spent the past four years living as cheaply as possible. If you own one pair of jeans, eat ramen for breakfast, or have found more uses for red Solo cups than MacGyver, then take heart: you’re more prepared than most for trying times.

-Despite their best efforts, you will still know more about the Internet than any of your older co-workers. And you should, given how many hours during finals you spent in the library Facebook stalking instead of studying. If you want to make an impression at your first job after college, simply tell your boss you’d like to set up a Twitter page for the company.  He’ll be so impressed with your ingenuity that he won’t even realize it only takes fifteen seconds and not the two weeks you estimated.

-If you don’t have a job, try to refrain from dating someone in the same predicament. All of my girlfriends since college have either been unemployed or freelancers or grad students. And since I’m home all day too, we’re always just…around each other. Which is a problem, because everyone needs a buffer zone. Work is a place where people go to get away from their significant others and have free reign to just make shit up. “Honey, I really have to get drinks with some guys from the office” is just code for “I’d rather not come home yet.”