You know, I graduated from Howard University and came back to Los Angeles and found it really, really difficult, not only to break into the industry but to get solid representation.

NPR: Acting Students Ready for Their Next Role

Having graduated from university I was forced to flee or face a deportation back to Afghanistan as I was no longer a student.

BBC: Time to reform refugee rules?

Visiting Caracas ahead of the 2006 election, I met a friend who had recently graduated from a newly established public university which charged its students just 300 bolivars a term, at the time the equivalent of about 15 cents.

CNN: STORY HIGHLIGHTS

When I decided to break away from my cubicle-bound life, I was 23 years old, the daughter of a protective family in India and had graduated from university in Singapore only two years earlier with a not-so-helpful Economics degree and a not-so-comforting amount of student debt.

BBC: How I quit my job to travel: The social media addict