The expectation to have successful time management during college is truly a remarkable thing.

For some reason, people expect you to be able to take on a ridiculous amount of things and be able to pull it all off. A challenging course load, extracurricular activities that demand at least five times the time they would have taken you in high school, paying your bills, doing your laundry (and the dishes!), doing homework, keeping fit, eating healthy, having a job (or five), having a relationship, and not going nuts.

Well, people really do not require you to not go nuts. That’s just a personal preference.

If you’re thinking about becoming a lawyer, one of the first things you’ll hear as an incoming law student is something like this: “First year, they scare you to death. Second year, they work you to death. Third year, they bore you to death.” True? More than a little.

Law school is like nothing you’ve ever done before. This becomes apparent on the first day when it takes one intense hour to read 10 pages. Then you go to class and a professor starts with the Socratic method: question upon question about a particular case. That’s why it takes an hour to read 10 pages. You have to be ready for anything the professor might ask. And then the professor stumps you on the third question anyway.

I just found out that there is a mistake on the resume that I have been sending out in my job applications.

A member of Cornell Career Services notified me this week that this error accounts for why I failed to secure an interview with a potential employer.

I’m not talking about some wee, negligible oversight — a “9” where there should be an “8,” a double space instead of a single one. I’m talking about a mother load of a blunder, as monstrous and glaring as it is undeniably and irreversibly catastrophic.

Under my “Home Address,” I have the following listed:

Toronto, Ontario

Canada

Not a grammatical glitch or a formatting failure, but a stain on my record all the same.

[“This email is being sent to all students who … did not receive an interview.”]

We are drowning. And not just in credit card bills and tuition payments. We are drowning in false choices.

We are told that we must choose between making money and making a difference — that it is not possible to harness our strengths, embrace our passions and have a career at the same time. We've been misled, misinformed and we’re now anxious about the future. But crisis — both economic and planetary — creates opportunity.

Whatever you think about your career during this economic maelstrom — think the opposite.