Now, she waits.

Like many other seniors, Emily Mahler is waiting for a number of things. She waits for finals week. She waits for graduation. But most straining, she waits for a job offer.

“It’s definitely the most stressful time of my life,” said Mahler, a finance major.

In the last two months, she has traveled to all corners of this state, interviewing with 15 different companies and hoping for an offer. She has doubled the mileage on her blue 2002 Sunfire in the last eight weeks, commuting more than 10,000 miles. She has mailed resumes and cover letters to about 50 employers.

All of this comes at a time when her class work and final projects creep closer to their due dates. She has a test tomorrow, two papers due next week and case studies for a financial planning class that smother most of her free time.

But on Wednesday night of last week, Mahler admits she is waiting. She had recently interviewed for her dream job, a position with Wells Fargo, a nationwide financial services company with more than 144,000 employees and $388 billion in assets. Company representatives told her afterwards they would contact her soon after the interview.

All she can do is wait.

“I can’t think of a time in my life where I’ve been so worried,” Mahler said. “And, I don’t think I have downtime to do anything.”

Mahler’s search is similar to many other seniors across the country who will graduate next month and enter the work force with an undergraduate degree. But for those waiting and hoping seniors, there is reason to be optimistic. For the first time in years, the stubborn economy finally seems revived from a black hole of slow employment.

In recent memory, the college graduate has encountered a stiff, if not unforgiving, job market where openings have dried up and young applicants were told, “you need more experience.” Job placement over the last two years wavered around 50 percent.

But now, “the jobs are out there,” said Linda Moore, acting director of career services at Eastern. “They may not find their dream job, but they will find a job.”

Last month the nation added 308,000 jobs to the market, while the National Association of College Employers predicted a 12.7 percent rise in hiring for spring graduates, the first such positive increase since 2001.

That means for seniors like Mahler, the anxious wait for a job offer may not take as long.

Just last year, NACE, a non-profit organization based in Bethlehem, Penn., predicted a 3.6 percent decrease in hiring one year after they calculated a sharp 20 percent drop for 2002.

As a result, some graduates were forced to take temporary or part-time jobs. More students applied for graduate school. At Eastern, the number of applications jumped from 1,460 in the 1999-2000 school year to 2,024 last year, according to numbers from Ann Schafer, admissions counselor of the graduate school.

“I wouldn’t say the market is really, really good, but it’s better than it has been,” said Andrea Carr, employment information manager for NACE, which polls 190 colleges and more than 1,100 employers for its annual report released in the fall. “It’s slowly improving.”

Carr added employers are looking for students with excellent communication skills with job-related work experience who have researched their companies before an interview.

Mahler, who has traveled to interviews four or five hours away from Charleston, fills dead time at stop lights by reading Internet printouts of the companies placed on the passenger seat of her car.

“I have to make sure I’m on top of what the company has to offer and what I have to offer, ” said Mahler, who prefers listening to relaxing music during her car rides like Dave Matthews Band or John Mayer.

On Friday afternoon, Mahler was yet to hear a yes or no from Wells Fargo.

She still waits.

Need a job? Teach

An additional variable making the college graduates’ job search even more difficult: themselves.

Some 11.1 million U.S. workers between the ages of 25 and 35 have college degrees but their rate of employment sank lower in 2003 than any other year since 1979, reports the Economic Policy Institute, a research group based in Washington D.C. Some 84.3 percent of the age group were employed in 2003, a figure down from the 87.4 percent in 2000.

“We had eight or nine years of expansion,” said Mike Pilot, head of the government’s occupational outlook program that releases reports biannually. “There were a number of shocks on the economy including 9/11, the Tech Bust, the dot com recession and a number of other things. But the economy now is coming out of a recession and is starting to add jobs.”

Those added jobs in Illinois, according to three state university career service directors, are found in education, especially in the math, science, accounting and special education areas.

Jobs that have fewer openings include history teachers and computer information systems. Most computer jobs have declined after the technology boom of the late 1990s, numerous career service directors agreed.

The No Child Left Behind Act has driven the demand for teachers with specialized training, as federal funding is now linked directly with performance in standardized test scores. Also, the boom of teachers from the 1970s and 1980s are now beginning to retire driving the demand even farther.

Other high-demand jobs this spring are: accounting; sales; chemistry and health and human service areas. Demand for workers in retail remains strong across the country, as the consumer society has money to spend, Moore explained.

Soon-to-be graduates planning a move out of the Midwest will encounter a slightly different job market on the west and east coasts.

In California, education jobs have disappeared as the state faces a budget deficit of at least $14 billion, said Deborah McCoy, the director of career services at the University of California at Riverside, a school of 17,000 students about 70 miles east of Los Angeles.

“For every good indicator we get,” McCoy says, “we get one that is not as good.”

Jay Skipworth, coordinator of career services at Troy State University, a college of 5,500 students nudged up against Florida and Georgia, described a similar job market to here. Openings were strong in sales and education, but they were weak in technology and computers.

Regardless of the job field, a loophole exists on college campuses for job seekers: career services. While national numbers for employment have swung around 50 percent, students nationally using their career services programs find jobs at an 80 percent clip. At Eastern, the rate was 83 percent last year, Moore boasted.

Mahler has scanned the more than 3,000 job postings on the career services Web site. She has also attended the on-campus interviews and conducted mock interviews.

“It’s been a great resource for me,” she said.

But would it be enough?

Does she get the job?

By Monday afternoon, Mahler nervously waits for the phone call – the phone call she wants after three interviews with Wells Fargo, the phone call she deserves.

Recently, she has studied more in shopping mall food courts and Starbucks coffee shops than Booth Library. She spends at least $30 on gas for each job interview trip, something that burns an even deeper hole in her finances because she has been forced to reduce her work schedule.

“It’s only human to think about the worst case scenario,” Mahler said. “I’ve talked to my parents: ‘What happens if I don’t get a job when graduate or have something lined up close to when I graduate? Do you have a problem with me coming home?’ “

Mahler decides Monday night she will call tomorrow morning and ask on her progress.

She can’t wait anymore.

Mahler calls Tuesday morning. Representatives tell her she has to wait, again.

“He said he didn’t know,” Mahler said on late Tuesday afternoon. “He said it was up to the regional manager, and they would get back to me.”

But isn’t the adage, good things come to those who wait? Mahler hopes so.

“I think everyone is trying to stay as calm as possible on the outside, but inside we’re very nervous. I’m just as nervous as everyone else: until I have that job in hand, it’ll be a stressful time in life.”