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We get contemplative as our college careers come careening to a close. Instead of focusing solely on papers, finals and vacation plans like we have at the end of previous quarters at UCLA, we spend our time musing about the unanswerable questions, such as “Have I spent my time here wisely?”, “Have I made the right decisions?” and “Will they still let me graduate if I have $4,750 worth of unpaid campus parking tickets?”

But while we look back on our time here with regret or wistfulness or simply with joy that we’re done, we also fear for the time ahead. Some graduating seniors are going straight to work, selling their souls to The Man for a steady paycheck and a 401(k). Some are taking vacation time, be it living at home and squeezing a few more months on the parental dime or backpacking through Europe (which is always just an excuse to get high in Amsterdam).

But many are going straight to graduate school, choosing to celebrate the culmination of 16 consecutive years of schooling by ... signing up for three to eight more consecutive years of schooling.

Grad school, it seems, is the new college. In the past, simply getting your college diploma was enough to send employers into a frenzy, fighting over you like you were the last piece of cheese. But in 2003, the number of college graduates in the U.S. had increased by nearly 40 percent over a decade, according to the National Science Foundation. That’s a lot more people competing for fewer and fewer jobs. The Economic Policy Institute reports that the employment rate for college graduates ages 25-35 is the worst it has been in 20 years. You have to get yourself even more education to distinguish yourself from the job-hungry hordes.

This probably isn’t the only reason students are lining up, clamoring for a chance to take more tests and write more papers; going straight to graduate school can seem easier than joining the working world. Once you get that job, it seems like two blinks of an eye and you’re getting married and buying a house and watching Charles Schwab commercials more closely, doing something called “liquidating” which doesn’t sound fun at all, retiring, and seriously thinking about whether Viagra or Cialis is right for you. Who wouldn’t want to postpone that for as long as possible?

So we pick a graduate school. And, of course, students who go to graduate school learn things that allow them to have better, longer, more prosperous careers. Some of them will also learn how to write that lawsuit I’ll need to file in 10 years and how to fix the arm I’ll break. But I wonder if the rush straight to graduate school is good for us – in the long run.

We’ve spent 16 years relentlessly and recklessly achieving things, all in preparation for the next achievement. We’ve spent our lives stressing out about things – papers, A-minuses, padding resumes – that will seem trivial in five years, let alone 50 years.

Most of us have not taken a break from the unending machine that is the American schooling system, such as working in a random job for a year or two or moving to another country and to experience life not centered around business titles, BMWs and bellyaching about a B+. Make a film or write a book or even watch a lot of films and read a lot of books.

Many members of the older generation will tell you that if you don’t take advantage of the ability to try something random for a while before you turn 25 and start on your career path, you won’t get the chance again.

Random life experiences after college can even help you get into graduate school. As more and more college students choose the grad-school path – more than 38 percent of all employed college graduates now have post-bachelor degrees – working on rainforest conservation in Honduras for a year would look much more interesting on an application than simply having participated in a campus save-the-rainforest protest. Graduate schools often prefer applicants who have some life experience to those who may be applying simply because they don’t yet want to find a job.

Those of you who are already going straight to graduate school, who have spent the past year applying and waiting and hoping and finally being accepted somewhere, by all means grab your new opportunity by the horns.

But those of you who are still deciding about your post-UCLA future, pick up that Peace Corps brochure you previously ignored, or attend a Career Center seminar on “gap year” options. You may end up realizing in 10 years that experiencing a small dose of Life between so many years of classrooms was the best thing you ever did.

Or maybe it will have sucked. At least you’re thinking about it. And hey, who knows – that gap year job might allow you to save up enough money to pay off your parking tickets, allowing UCLA Parking Services to rescind its claim to your firstborn. Sometimes these things really do work out for the best.

E-mail Atherton at datherton@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.