The topic of graduate school admissions can pop up in the most unexpected places. I'm a fan of Salon.com, and one of their advice columnists (Cary Tennis) recently published a letter from a 20-year-old called "I'm wasting my semester abroad watching TV in my apartment." Subtitle: "Could I really be blowing the definitive period of my college life?" Tennis's advice in this column is spot-on: humane, productive, sympathetic. He gets it. I love him. I want to send him flowers.

I'm very familiar with the reader's plight, because it's a common one for college students and recent graduates. College students are encouraged to seize opportunities to stretch, but then they find that stretching experiences are inherently difficult and uncomfortable and unfamiliar. This article gives great advice about how to get unstuck in those situations.