It's that time of year again for a lot of us here at Penn State.

Many of us are starting to dig into the back of the closet and pull out those clothes we haven't worn in quite a while. We're spending a little extra time in front of the mirror making sure everything looks just right.

Yes, it's time to worry about what the hell you're going to do after graduation, and hopefully line up a job.

Each semester, as the deadline of graduation gets closer and closer, I start to worry a little bit more about what I'm going to do after I finally receive my diploma. By that time, the burden of student loan debt will be hanging over me like some dark cloud. I can only hope to get a job that can pay those bills and allow me enough to afford some rat-infested apartment and a couple packs of Ramen noodles. As a future reporter, those chances are slim.

Lucky for us, Penn State offers plenty of help in this regard with multiple job fairs for my post-college planning. On Friday I decided to finally take advantage of one as I checked out the College of Communication's Job Expo at the HUB. I dug out the one suit I own, polished my shoes and went out, resumes in hand, to see what these companies had to offer.

It certainly feels odd to be wearing business clothes on campus. When you attend a school of more than 40,000 students, most wearing jeans and sweatshirts, the dozens of people dressed in suits and business attire on the day of a job fair tend to stick out. The click-clack of high heels and the tugging of ties aren't the norm here, so walking around in a suit certainly can make one feel out of place.

In fact, for many it looks like a day of dress up. Guys wearing ill-fitting sports coats, girls walking in heels that look just a little too big. I even saw a couple of people who were using pins to cuff their pants which were obviously just a little too long. As a matter of fact, I had a bit of a wardrobe malfunction before the event when one of my belt loops broke. It all makes for some good "adult-practice."

For those who have never been, job fairs are a lot like the first dance you went to in middle school. You get all dressed up in clothes you rarely wear hoping to look a little older than you are. And, like that dance, a lot of people just stand around against the wall, too shy or nervous to approach anyone. In this case it's booths of potential employers they seem to be afraid of as opposed to members of the opposite sex.

Even when you get the nerve to approach one of the booths, it still feels a little awkward. Everyone knows that first impressions mean a lot, so you want to make yours a good one. But it's not exactly an interview, you don't have time to tell them your life story and why you would be perfect to fill the opening they have. It's more of a fact-finding mission for both you and the employer.

So I slapped on my name tag and visited a number of booths I was interested in, smiled, shook hands and traded my resume for their business card.

Then I took a pen, notepad or one of the other free items they had to offer on their table.

This is one of the "perks" of attending job fairs, bags full of trinkets with the company's name on it. One woman actually said to me, "Here take a few more pens, I'm trying to get rid of them."

I walked away from booths with a mix of comments that went from the somewhat positive ("You're definitely the type of person we'd like to hire if you were graduating this year") to the very negative ("There are just less and less jobs in this industry every year").

Most of the time I was left with a promise of, "We'll be in touch."

It started to feel like some bad blind date, giving my phone number to a woman who I know is just going to throw it away as soon as I walk out of sight.

Whether or not this job fair will result in future employment or a summer internship is yet to be determined. But one this is for sure: I've got plenty of pens and notepads now.