Friday morning, the Department of Labor released its much-anticipated monthly job report. The results were sobering. For the first time in a year, there was zero job growth reported for the month of August, and unemployment remains at 9.1 percent.

Further information presented by NPR revealed that 40 percent of those who are unemployed have been so for 27 weeks or more.

As college students, we live in a bubble. In a pinch, we would all be able to go weeks without leaving campus.
Yet outside the wrought-iron gates, the American way of life continues to be shaped, for better or worse. Are we prepared to enter it?

When the bubble is effectively popped at graduation, and we are fully exposed to the chafing of the world, outside the protective circle of academia, will we be able to handle it?

I am a senior this year. For the class of 2012 and me, the bubble will pop in a few short months. With this in mind, we look at the job market, the recessed economy, the piddling of our government representatives, the fading hope of retirement and the dissolving of the middle class. We look at the state of America and wonder what we are inheriting and how we can ever possibly hope to fix it.

Americans need to wake up and start taking responsibility. I am beginning to think that the Mayans, in some insane stroke of foresight, were correct: that a new age is approaching, because humanity cannot possibly hope to sustain itself as it exists today.

When the Sisters of Mercy founded Mercyhurst College, they inundated it with their core values, including those of being socially merciful and globally responsible. In attending Mercyhurst, we have also signified that we believe and are willing to act out these values. In the 21st century, the values of the Sisters of Mercy desperately require application, and it is our responsibility to do so.