"It's very comfortable just to drift here"

We often frame life after college as the real world. I’ve heard so many of my friends wonder aloud what they’ll do with their liberal arts degree in the real world. For now, we’re drifting. We’re living in the fantasy land of college, where the stakes are lower and we don’t have to depend on ourselves for anything.

Really?

College is very real to me and so many of us who somehow juggle full-time school schedules with jobs, extracurriculars and personal lives.

If this isn’t real life, our life after college might be awfully confusing.

Especially for a generation that has been called the boomerangers. Rapidly growing numbers of us are returning to live with our parents after graduation. It’s not all our fault, but it’s easy to feel the burden we put on our parents. It’s easy to feel like we’re drifting without a future.

What happens when our real lives after college are as unreal as our lives during college?

Mike Nichols’ 1967 classic “The Graduate” poses that question more realistically and affectingly than any other movie about young adult life.

Generations later, it remains the perfect picture of post-undergrad near-apathy. Ben Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) scuba dives in his parents’ swimming pool just to get away and think.

He seeks solace in the sultry diversion of Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), whose taboo romance provides important but unsteady relief from the pressures of his so-called real world.

It’s a comic masterpiece, equal parts witty and insightful. It makes me laugh and cry, even when I’m watching it sober. This is an important film for our generation of boomerangers.

Before you graduate — whether you’re starting a career, diving into grad school or heading home for a while — make sure to watch “The Graduate.”

It’ll help you deal with an unreal real world.