I’m not asking for much out of my first real job, just meaningful work helping improve people’s lives in some way with plenty of time in the evenings and weekends to do my own writing. I don’t require health care, and I don’t even need opportunities to move up in the company.

So why does it feel like I’m asking for too much?

In 2014, 89 percent of the graduates from Champlain's Professional Writing program had a job within a year, and of those, 94 percent had a job that was "relevant" to their career goals. Who gets to decide what’s “relevant” or not? Someone might be writing copy for an advertising agency, but is that what they want to be doing? Will that help them break into the theater scene in New York, where they really want to be?

The biggest problem with these statistics is that they don’t tell us what percentage of graduates are happy. Of the 89 percent who had jobs within a year, how many wake up excited to go to work? Of the 94 percent who landed “relevant” jobs, how many could look at themselves in a mirror and say, “This is exactly who I hoped I’d be?” Do they feel valued? Is their work fulfilling? If even 50 percent of that 94 percent of that 89 percent of people who had jobs felt like there was something more they needed to be doing, that would still be a lot of people.

I want a statistic that tells me how many of the 89 percent will stay in their first post-graduate job for far longer than they ever wanted to. I want to know how many will grow comfortable right where they are, moving farther and farther away from those dreams they had when they were in college until they can’t even see them. How many will settle for good enough?

Next year, I’ll be part of these statistics. The possibility that’ll I end up taking a job in the marketing department of an insurance or Oil Company makes me nauseous. What if I’m someone who settles for good enough, or what if I have to because my student loans demand it? As Marina Keegan wrote in her essay, Even Artichokes Have Doubts: “Even if it’s just for two or three years. That’s a lot of years! And these aren’t just years. This is twenty-three and twenty-four and twenty-five. I feel like we can do something really cool to this world. And I fear–at twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, we might forget.”

Any middle-aged adult will tell you that a few years turns into a few decades in the blink of an eye. One minute you’re taking a year off before you go back to school, and the next you’re sitting in the nursing home wondering where that year and those that followed went, wishing you could go back and make a different choice. I don’t want to settle for good enough and then regret all the people I didn’t help, all the stories I didn’t write.

My economic reality hangs like shackles around my wrists. I’m $30,000 in debt, and already collecting interest though I haven’t graduated. For some loans, I’ll have to begin repayment immediately upon graduation, and for the rest I’ll have a six month grace period. To transport myself to several unpaid internships throughout college, I had to buy a car, which is an additional monthly bill I’ll be paying for years to come.

Even with financial support from my mother covering health and car insurance, my phone bill, heat and water, and (thankfully) not charging me rent to sleep under her roof, I still need to have a job that pays no less than $30,000 a year lined up before I even graduate. That means I’ll be looking for jobs in-between classes and writing for my senior capstone and work-study hours spent typing up Excel sheets of job-placement statistics at my college’s career office. That means Skype interviews when I should be putting up a bulletin board in my residence hall or submitting another application that no one will respond to when I should be squeezing every precious moment out my remaining time in college.

I’m one of the lucky ones, but I still feel the pressure. How am I supposed to find meaningful work when my economic reality forces me to search and settle for any kind of work? I’m scared of settling for a job that isn’t meaningful to me, of getting trapped there so long I lose sight of what’s important to me. But I’m more scared of defaulting on my loans and losing any chance at establishing financial independence for myself.

No one told me I would face these realities when I took out so many loans. I feel like I’ve been baited with colorful marketing materials and lectures about how essential a college degree is, and now I’m trapped with economic shackles and a degree that may or may not help me dig myself out from this hole, let alone provide me with meaningful work.

Somehow an 89 percent job placement rate isn’t making me feel any more secure about my future.