Hi, my name is Leslie and I'm (as of yet) unemployed.

(Group: "Hi, Leslie.")

Kinda has a nice ring to it, no?

After spending the last five years of my life working myself into a twitching mass of nerves worrying about what's going to happen after graduation, I'm starting to think so.

Understand, now, that I'm your typical worry wart. If I'm not anxious, I'm probably not conscious. Everyone who knows me knows this.

I envy those calm, collected individuals who laugh in the face of adversity while the best I can do is don a happy face on the outside even though I'm getting more nervous by the nanosecond on the inside.

Take, for example, the majority of my friends: they're graduating in a matter of weeks and on the whole, they're all happy as clams. I'm in a resume-sending frenzy, and they're playing their 34th consecutive round of Snood.

But no, not me. Until very recently, I'd be up until 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning, searching for jobs on the Internet, looking through magazines for the perfect haircut to complement that stylish graduation cap, flipping through an atlas to find myself a place in the world I'd actually like to be, or most likely, just lying in bed worrying about what's going to happen after I walk across that stage.

The scenarios would play over in my head. And over. And over. After a while they'd get so familiar, they were almost comforting, even though they weren't that great. (Think old Prince CD on repeat.)

Some of them would be grandiose: I'd worry that I'll be living as a hermit in a tent in Montana, knitting little socks for my cat. Others, more realistic: I'd stay in every night, worried that if I didn't get to bed, I wouldn't get to class, much less to graduation, at least not with honors.

I'd get worried that I was too worried and try to calm myself with soothing quotes about moving on in life. (Confucius says: "Wherever you go, go with all your heart" comes to mind.)

Then, somebody challenged me: "Who cares?"

I got defensive.

Excuse me, but I do. I care. I want to succeed, to carve my niche in society, to make a lasting impression, to have an impact on lives, to love and be loved.

Notice that nowhere in that eclectic mix of altruism did I mention excessive worrying. And after the guard was brought down and the challenge had a moment to simmer, came that epiphany.

Yes, I have goals. Worrying, though, isn't helping to achieve them.

Of course, I knew that all along. But when graduation day looms so closely overhead, knowledge can turn to mush. I needed somebody to remind me; to make me sane again when I didn't know how to be.

Enter sanity.

My two best friends are polar opposites. She's pragmatic, he's eccentric. She's a liberal arts/helping profession kinda gal, and he's an econ major. She's super-responsible, and he's . . . well, let's not go there.

But somehow, with the two of them on either side of me, I feel balanced out. I like to think of the two of them, together, as my better half.

Everyone knows people who keep odd hours. The more eccentric of my aforementioned friends not only keeps them, but likes to urge me to take on similar nocturnal habits as well, specifically by calling or stopping by at, for instance, 5 a.m.

"You know," I told him during one such interlude, "you really need to pick more appropriate hours to be hanging out."

"But why?" he asked. "Do you know why I do this, why I stay out all night? Because I can. Once I graduate, it's over."

That made sense to me — because it was the same reason that I was worrying all the time — I was worrying because I knew that my college career is finite. I knew that eventually I'd have to leave here, and leave most (if not all) of the people I know.

Somehow, though, his comment made me realize that in this whole elaborate worrying process, I was just wasting the remainder of time I still had a guarantee on.

It also made me realize just how lucky I am to be surrounded by people who would donate that much effort to help me find some rationale (Read: pull my head out of my butt).

And when I came sobbing my realizations to the more practical of my better half, she let me sob because she was sensible enough to know that I needed to, and that the well would eventually run dry.

I cried. She consoled.

I felt better. We talked about planning "girls only" vacations until we're old and gray.

I resolved to turn over a new leaf.

Now, with numbered days left in my lengthy undergraduate career, I'm not wasting, and I'm not worrying. I'm living it up. I'm making the most of it. I'm taking advantage of those 5 a.m. calls, and I'm not squelching those urges to hold group project meetings at the Café, or stay out until the sun comes up on a random Monday morning.

Why not watch one more episode of A Makeover Story with your best friend, or stay up eating popcorn and talking about men with your roommate?

You may be tired in class the next day, but how many more opportunities will you have with them? Which will you relish some day: the exhaustion or the memories?

Why don't you help your faithful high school friend train her dog to fetch, or sing along when your kindred spirit plays his guitar every time you hang out?

I know I am.

And I know that well spent, I'll be able to take all those times and all those life lessons I've learned from my friends wherever I go, when I do eventually find a job. But as for that, I'm in no worry, and I'm in no hurry.

I have the rest of my life to work, and only so long left here to enjoy.