One day in June 2008, accountant Matthew Paluch got an e-mail invitation to a meeting. It was from a senior manager at his company, Deloitte & Touche, and said nothing but the date, time and location and that the meeting was to "discuss the upcoming year."

"I was thinking, 'Oh my God am I getting in trouble because I was using the Internet, checking blogs, Facebook?' I didn't do anything wrong," Paluch, now 24, said.

Paluch, a rookie who joined the company in 2007 after graduating from the University of Buffalo, asked colleagues what it could possibly mean. At first, he thought it might be a transfer to another division. Ultimately, though, Paluch became one of millions of people laid off that month in the first of a wave of layoffs in the current recession. The layoff put Paluch at a crossroads. He could look for another accounting job or do something he had been considering -returning to school to find a different career.

He wasn't alone in considering a return to school. College enrollment for 18- to 24-year-olds hit a record high in October 2008, according to the Pew Research Center. Researchers said this increase - 39.6 percent of all Americans in that age group, as compared to 35.5 percent in 2000 - may be caused by the recession. At the same time college enrollment hit an all time high, the lowest percent of young people was working since the government began tracking the statistic in 1948.

With one month's pay as a severance package, he moved back home to Buffalo and lived with his parents, taking a road trip and volunteering for Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

A few months later, Paluch's uncle, John Lafferty, offered him a temporary part-time job at his personal investment management business in Tarrytown.

Paluch moved back to New York City in November 2008 to work for Lafferty, where he stayed until the project was finished in late January.

He went back on unemployment, and this spring, the stress of being unemployed began to take a toll.

"I don't want to say I cracked, but I kinda cracked," he said. "I got real nervous, not depressed, but anxious, just like worried and freaking out about it."

He'd get headaches and be shaky and sweaty, which he blamed on his lingering unemployment.

His friends could see the change in him.

A college friend, Sara Gargiulo, 24, of Hell's Kitchen, said that although Paluch would keep a lot of his worries to himself, they would emerge occasionally.

"Sometimes I'd talk to him and he was just freaking out about not having a job or not knowing what was gonna be next," she said.

Paluch confided in friends that he was worried his limited work experience would make it hard to get a job, said his friend Martha Pearson, 25, of Gramercy Park.

It was about this time when Paluch finally decided to begin the application process to return to school. It was too late to apply for the fall 2009 semester, but he began researching schools and taking admissions tests to return in the spring 2010 semester.

Although he had decided to return to school, he wouldn't begin classes for several months and was still unemployed. After searching for months, Paluch found a job through Craigslist, which he was offered on May 5. He started in a sales position at a contract maid, handyman and dog-walking service, taking home about $475 a week after taxes, but got a raise and moved to a salaried position of about $20 an hour when he was promoted to a human resources director position.

Once he got the job, the physical manifestations of his lingering unemployment cleared up immediately.

"It doesn't take a genius to see that the two are related," he said.

This fall, he completed his application to two graduate programs and one undergraduate program. He was accepted to the undergraduate program in political science at CUNY in December.

He's liked news and current events since he was a child, he said.

"If I can make a career out of what I'm interested and what I find engrossing, I should pursue that," he said. "I know that pursuing that would give me fulfillment ... In a career sense, it would kind of give me what I'm looking for."

Although he now has a steady job, he hasn't been able to save any money to pay for this new degree, so plans to finance it with loans.

"I'm gonna go buckwild with loans," he said. "My credit's sick. I think it's 700 something. I'm 24 years old, that's good credit."

Although Paluch now has a clearer focus of where he's headed, he is just beginning this new path.

"I'm still figuring it out, but at least I have more focus now."