So where do you see yourself in the future?” a strange man asks as a wide-eyed young woman looks on with such exuberance you feel like you are talking to an 8-year-old. Regardless, you panic.

One day after whoring myself out to all these different companies and I’m supposed to have my future mapped out? How the hell am I supposed to know where I will be in five years? You want to say, “Hopefully working for you,” but you know they won’t take that as an answer, because they seem to be looking for some deep, philosophical bull-crap as if you have your life plan written down in a gazillion-page organizer that you keep hidden behind a picture frame in your study.

And no matter how many times you actually do rehearse your lines, it never comes out exactly the way you want it to, and before you know it, you end up telling the story of how you got into a huge fight with one of your best friends in Las Vegas because he wanted to order a prostitute off a flier he found lying on the sidewalk.

OK, so maybe that didn’t happen. And maybe you don’t want to hear how my interview went – but here is how yours will go: Your vision will blur. Your forehead will sweat, as will your armpits and other various orifices. You might not remember your first and/or last name. And no matter what you say, they will look at you like you are some moronic third grader who was just sent to the principal’s office.

Or was that just me?

The fact is, interviewing is a frightening experience. And it’s not that you are nervous about impressing the 40-year-old middle-management guy whose pay grade is not quite high enough to get out of interviewing entry-level college know-it-alls, but because it is at your first real interview when it really hits you that this is your future that is staring at you from across the desk.

Of course it doesn’t have to be, but unless you prefer to be buried in debt from your Rainbow sandals to your faux-hawk, then it might be a good idea to start considering working on that resume. Because, up until now, there has always been that dream, that desire to not play into the corporate game, to not go work for the man. Slowly, that desire fades away as you realize that it is the man who has the money. Even industries that were once a venue to escape from the rat race have been subjected to corporate takeover. Now label conglomerates gain revenue from anti-corporate acts who can now stick it to the man safely from their Beverly Hills mansions.

Call it selling out – call it what you will – but it is unavoidable. We will all at some point or another play into the corporate game. Even by attending this university, which has contracts with food and beverage conglomerates, computer and engineering companies, we cannot escape. So don’t be scared of the future, because the man will take care of you. And the sooner you accept this (somewhere around the time they offer you a nice $70K starting salary with paid vacation and health insurance), the better off you will be.

– Andrew Gionnette is a senior in mechanical engineering from Chanhassen, Minn.