Joining the Gulf club

Despite being in the heart of the Middle East, Dubai is not known for its political calamities. The small emirate has gained a reputation as a business center, perhaps the world's next New York or London. Attracting high-roller clientele, the newest branches of Fortune 500 companies and one of the most international populations in the world, Dubai is living up to that reputation. When I landed in Dubai, I was immediately fascinated by the booming emirate. As my hotel's complimentary sedan glided through midnight traffic, shining skyscrapers lit the night, and construction cranes hovered above almost every inch of the city.

I was in Dubai for a "sell weekend" with a potential employer. Over the next 48 hours I would learn about consulting life in the United Arab Emirates: a life of four-day business trips to Egypt for project work, of meetings in fancy hotels with disarmingly savvy Saudi businessmen and of nights out on the town with French, German, American, Bulgarian, Egyptian, Lebanese, Iranian and Palestinian coworkers. Business was booming. While the global financial crisis meant bankruptcy for European and American financial institutions, in the Gulf States it meant opportunities for sovereign wealth funds to invest in those same ailing markets. More importantly for me, at the time, it meant something else: a potential job.

A Princeton graduate's typical job options - consulting and finance - have narrowed significantly. Investment banks were almost absent at the fall career fair. Companies that usually recruit heavily from Princeton stopped their interview processes altogether. One of the top four consulting firms conducted fullround interviews at Princeton but hired almost no one. And a senior consultant at another top firm told me they relocated a good amount of their New York and Boston hires to, you guessed it, Dubai.

Unsurprisingly, applications for postgraduate fellowships like Teach For America have increased significantly. Many of my fellow seniors thought they would have a job by now and are seriously considering graduate school instead.

Tough job prospects will surely continue next year and perhaps even the following year, depending on how quickly the Obama administration can clean up our economy. The way I see it, this situation has two major positive outcomes. First, students who are less than fanatical about pursuing consulting and finance can eagerly, and with no sense of regret or pressure, take a different path. It's the path that many other high-caliber college graduates pursue: jumping head first into the sector they truly care about. How wonderful will it be to say that you're a Woody Woo major working at State next year? Or to say that you're a chemical engineer working for a chemical factory (if that's actually what chemical engineers do). Or that you're a comparative literature major going to graduate school for ... comparative literature?

The other option - the one I've chosen - is equally tantalizing. With next to no jobs available domestically, we now have extra incentive to take jobs abroad. Whether in Dubai or anywhere else, the opportunity to work abroad, and the acceptance of that opportunity, comes rarely. When else will you be able to pick up and leave home for one or two years? The idea of escaping the conveyor belt and exploring the world for a bit is a fantasy few get to live out. (Anyone seen "Revolutionary Road"? "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"? No? Alright, stop studying and see a movie already.) And if neither of those options seems particularly appealing, then gear up for a tough round of job interviews and prepare for the possibility of taking an involuntary "gap year" between college and employment. Apparently it's quite fashionable in Europe. At least that's what I was told by the French kids in Dubai.

Sarah Dajani is a Wilson School major from Seminole, Fla. She can be reached at sdajani@princeton.edu.