THE EMPLOYMENT TRAIL

The Employment Trail

SCENARIO

2026 - Freshman Year

YOU, a so-called “STEMLord,” have been put through the wringer in the years since the post-COVID layoffs and the flood of underqualified applicants gutted the Computer Science job market. Long gone is the promise of Software Engineering as an “easy path to generational wealth.”

Instead of the typical experience afforded to real students, you have spent your senior year of High School haunted by a dismal GPA while trying and failing to project an oxymoronic image based on "alcoholic" "academia" to your increasingly concerned friends and family.

With your work ethic in retreat and the sloth of the COVID era still in vogue, it's looking like you won't be in college any longer than your dropout friends. To have any hope of survival, you must persevere through endless struggles and mental crises and a looming crisis of confidence as your peers get interviews and climb the LinkedIn social ladder.

You must also contend with an interpersonal scene that still seems trapped in prepubescence, ceding the blank canvas that is your romantic presence to your naïve best friend and your antisocial roommate.