It should come as no surprise to anyone who's been on the job search in the last two or three years that networking is now being held up as the be all and end all of job hunting strategies. Normally, I simply skim this ubiquitous and rather facile advice (it's on par with Cosmo beauty tips when it comes to regurgitating the same ol' same ol'), but this piece from the Wall Street Journal was effectively the straw that broke the camel's back. I think it was the use of voila. It's a recession, lady. There ain't a whole lotta voila-ing going on, ya dig?

Of all of the downsides associated with the can-do attitude Gen Y was ostensibly raised with (the inability to handle failure or criticism, a purported bafflement at not having the world handed to us on a silver platter, etc.), the most subtle and rarely acknowledged would have to be the fact that we weren’t educated to the fact that not all of our peers were being indoctrinated with the same overweening sense of self-esteem that we were.  Not everyone grew up believing that that they could be a marine biologist-ambassador- heavy metal drummer.

An interesting question was raised in the comments section of my recent Model Behavior column on the Bitch Magazine website and it's one that I'm no stranger to contemplating: Where is all of the research on and dialogue around the non-white, non-middle class Gen Y experience? Why do we only ever hear about student debt load and the plight of college grads who are moving back to the safe haven of Mom and Dad's suburban oasis? What about those who never made it to college in the first place?

Last week, a reader sent a link to a Slate article on the new wave of sexual judgment-mongering among Gen Y and suggested I might want to address the issue here. I wasn't sure I was the one to write this because A) I spent my college years (undergrad and grad) at schools and/or in programs that lacked the traditional qualities necessary to foster a thriving campus hook-up culture - no Greek systems, significantly unequal male/female enrollment stats, nose-to-the-grindstone academic focus, etc. and B) wherever there's a loop, I'm guaranteed to be out of it.