For some Southeast Missouri State University grads, the future isn't so clear

Congratulations! You've graduated. You don't know how, you're not sure why, but you've done it. After four (or six, or eight) years of college and all the strain that comes with it -- the parties, the studying, the parties while you should be studying, the sleepless stretches during finals, the professors who are convinced the only method of accumulating knowledge is via Powerpoint presentation -- you're finally done, and ready to jump into the real world. What now?

In this feature, we'll profile a few students caught at that juncture. All three have the degrees, the ambition, and the smarts, and all three have different visions of what they want to do with their lives. So relax, crank up Simon and Garfunkel's "Mrs. Robinson" and contemplate the worlds of these recent graduates as they work out exactly what they're going to do with their lives.

Hannah Hart

HANNAH HART (The artist)

"Screw money," says Hannah Hart. "I wanna be happy and do my art."

It's taken eight years for her to get here, to the point in her life when she can do just that. She graduated in May with a Bachelor of Fine Arts and has had her work shown at the Fountain Street Gallery, the Arts Council and the Sidewalk Sandwich Shop -- and that's just within the past month. Vice president of the Southeast Missouri State University Art Guild, a constant fixture at the Southeast Student Art Show -- Hannah has achieved about as much as a Cape Girardeau artist can ask for, and at the tender age of 27.

She's come a long way from the girl who dropped out of Mizzou after a year to travel the United States with a bunch of hippies in a van selling hemp jewelry and dog collars. Today she's settled down (sort of). She's established herself in the Cape Girardeau art scene, gaining credentials most art students can't brag about. Thanks to an undeniable talent for painting and a fiery personality, she's already found success in a traditionally difficult field. She's also motivated by a special force, one unfamiliar to most college students: the demands of being a single mom.

"My son is my muse," she says. "He inspired me to go back to school. I wanted to have a better life for him."

Hannah's son also inspires her in a more direct way. From her paintings at the Fountain Street Gallery and Sidewalk Sandwich, to the painting that hangs in her living room, almost all of Hannah's work is drawn from a common image: the face of her son.

Hannah works hard to raise her son well, but knows that, like her, he'll soon have to make a big change in his life.

"It's brutal," she says. "These are the most spongy years of his life. He goes to a good school, though, and he's good at adapting, so I think he'll do fine with the move."

Hannah is referring to The Move, a tactical maneuver familiar to so many recent graduates. In the struggle to find their destiny, college graduates can often relocate thousands of miles; anywhere willing to hire them is fair game. This fall, Hannah and her son will head off into the unknown, moving cross-country in search of a job and a new life.

"I'm going to take a year off, then maybe try and get into grad school somewhere," she says. "I don't really know what I'll be doing. I'll work and pay off some bills … Settle in … Maybe get a job at an art store."

The Move is often the college students' last burst of idealism before the harsh realities of working life set in. It's based around the sentiment that a college degree is an instant passport to adventure, anywhere in the world, to a job market filled with willing and smiling interviewers ready to guarantee the recent graduate a lucrative and philosophically fulfilling position at the job of their dreams. (Employee benefits include sunshine, lollipops and a health care plan that actually covers the cost of a hospital visit.) Of course, the reality of the professional world often poses a bit of a shock to graduates, which leads us to ...

Buddy Iahn (submitted photo)

BUDDY IAHN (The drummer)

Buddy Iahn, who also graduated in May, is about to try The Move. He just doesn't know where yet.

"It's down to Nashville and L.A.," he says. "I'm hoping to find something with video production, to start out with."

He's gotten a few pointers.

"Everyone's telling me Nashville is more freelance work. You need your own equipment, and I really don't have the kind of things they need. L.A. has TV studios with plenty of equipment. That's always a plus."

Like Hannah, Buddy is also moving far away to pursue his dreams. He may well end up working in a TV studio, but don't be surprised to see him on stage someday, either.

Buddy has been playing drums since he was two years old. He started taking lessons at 4, and has played in half a dozen bands, including a Christian metal act called Healing Wounds. Since graduation, he's passed the time playing music with his dad, a guitarist.

Show business, especially the musical side of it, is his life: he even helps manage a Reba McEntire fan site.

"Oh, that's an interesting one," he laughs. "I've been a fan of Reba since '92, and there was a fan site I visited quite a bit, and I would post stuff on the forums, and then last summer the owner of the site asked if I could help him out."

"It's a résumé thing," he explains.

As a drummer, he's met and played with a lot of big industry names, including Addison Steele (Guns & Roses, Elton John) and Bill Bruce (who once toured with Ozzy Osbourne.) He was also one of the lucky Cape Girardeau residents who got to participate in the filming of "Killshot," as a grip, when the crew came to town in January. Along with work as a technician for KFVS-12, a programmer for a Farmington radio station and a producer for the Southeast news show "Discover Cape," that's enough to make an impressive résumé, Reba or not.

But Buddy still knows he has to focus on the present as he makes plans for the future.

"Yesterday I spent most of the afternoon looking for film jobs in the Los Angeles area," he says. "Next week I'll probably go out to Farmington and job search."

Some graduates, like Buddy, dream of the bright lights and big city of Los Angeles (or the slightly dimmer, yet more boot-stompin', lights of Nashville.) Others, who prefer pragmatism to idealism, plan small, stay in the area and concentrate on establishing roots. They're the common man, although they can sometimes be very uncommon; for example,

Kevin Butz

KEVIN BUTZ (The jack of all trades)

"I'm what they call a renaissance man," says Kevin Butz. It's the reason, he says, he chose to graduate with a BA in general studies. "I was a social work major for a year and a half, elementary education for a year. But then I realized, I like kids, I wanna have kids, but I don't wanna teach kids."

He's standing in the driveway of the house he's owned for two years, since his older brother -- its former landlord -- graduated. In those two years Kevin has transformed what was once one of Southeast's most notorious party houses -- picture beer bottles in the most unlikely places, strange and mysterious stains on ratty, bad-smelling couches, bathrooms that verge on Stygian -- into a respectable and surprisingly clean home. It's taken a lot of backbreaking work, but as always, Kevin's the guy for the job.

"I like to work hard and I like building things," he says. "I'd like to be a carpenter and a house remodeler."

Kevin lists off the work he's done on the house in the past year. "Bunch of sheet-rock work, new basement ceilings, new kitchen floors, new bathroom floors, painted every wall, put in molding and trim, and patched the floors. Major plumbing work." Half of it, he says, he did entirely by himself. He hired contractors -- but they only showed for three days. Since then, he's continued the work on his own.

Kevin isn't leaving the area any time soon. Even though he's graduated, he's going to keep living in and working on the house, less than a block away from campus. And for now, he's thinking in terms of the immediate future.

"This summer, tracking down a job is priority numero uno," he says.

Kevin already works at the family dude ranch, Eaglehurst Ranch, in Steeleville, Mo. And he's proud of his family's unusual project.

"Did you ever see that show, 'Hey Dude?'" he says. "It's exactly like that. My whole family runs it -- my parents own it along with my aunt and uncle, and my grandparents, siblings and cousins have all worked there."

Kevin works as a cook at the ranch, but takes on more demanding tasks from time to time.

"This summer? I'm putting up barbed wire," he says.

But after the summer, Kevin has no set plans -- other than to just roll with whatever life offers.

"It depends on if I get a job," he says. "Hopefully, I'll just be working, going on some adventures … You know, just living."

He'll be living in a house he almost single-handedly saved from the brink of disaster.

"I've gone from, 'I'm worried windows are going to break,' to 'I'm trying to keep my vegetable garden alive," he says.

One of his projects for the summer is teaching himself how to can vegetables. "I'm trying to be completely vegetable self-sufficient," he says. "Tomatoes, green beans, eggplant, raspberry bushes, pepperonchinis." The vegetable garden in front of the house that once boasted an equally impressive beer-can garden is just another testament to Kevin's ability to fix up virtually anything.