Employers look at Facebook and Google you, yadda yadda. It’s an old story. You know it, we do it, DP commenters want the paper to move on.

But if we all know this, why are Penn students so lazy about simple protective steps — and so slow to take advantage of us gullible bosses?

According to one estimate, more than 30,000 Penn students have their profiles open for any alum to browse around. Which we will. Because employers are immoral, awful people. (Unlike undergrads who Facebook freshmen rushing their fraternity, or look up their assigned roommates. But I digress.)

Of course, running scare stories — employers will use the Patriot Act to access Facebook! Your profile will be part of your job application! — is more fun for college newspapers than being frank: plenty of curious employers can’t get to your page unless they try really hard. Many Penn students won’t interview with alums who have Facebook, and a growing number of companies block social networking sites anyway.

But most importantly, there’s a big shift underway: as employees sign up for sites like Facebook and MySpace, embarassing personal details are increasingly accepted (and ignored) in the workplace. Not to mention that seeing revealing Halloween pictures of aging coworkers is a lot scarier than seeing college kids do college things.

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Breaking all self-imposed rules, promises, and general personal preferences, I did something awful a few weeks ago. Something self-righteous liberal College students with useless-but-fascinating majors should never have to do. Something I did for you, dear readers. Yes, both of you.

I, Wharton-mocking, anti-Event Planning 100, “Who-Needs-a-Job-When-You-Have-a-Soul” Lindsey Stull, attended management training. For six hours, I stared at PowerPoint presentations and role-played (er, not the fun way) and heard the seconds tick by on the clock behind my head. Worst of all, I was subjected to this in the Death Star, which just added insult to injury. (And yes, it has its own website.)

I stress-ate my way through two sandwiches, handful after handful of chips, and 18 mini candy bars. I then carefully folded the wrappers into perfect little rectangles, wrote out a to do list, saved it on my desktop as a “do me” list, and looked around for the bag of chocolate. I discovered that I cannot, in fact, levitate objects and mentally pull them toward me.

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