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It still pays to earn a college degree. That is, if you get the right one. Georgetown University published a report Wednesday that looked into this dilemma.

"The labor market demands more specialization. So, the game has changed," says Anthony Carnevale, report co-author and director of Georgetown's Center on Education and the Workforce.

If she could go back, she says she would have done more research and maybe even held off on going to college to save up money. Her former high school classmates who don't have four-year degrees have moved up, working as medical assistants or retail managers.

"It's sad to see that a lot of people who I went to high school with who didn't go to college are doing much better than I am," Mantilla says.

She's not very optimistic, she says, but her parents and fiance are.

"So whenever I get extremely negative, they are the ones keeping me going," she says. "And I just try not to stay still and not doing anything. I keep looking every morning, I sign up for job announcements, I get emails and I keep applying and I'm hoping that one day something will come my way."

Carnevale says Mantilla's lack of guidance is not uncommon.

"The United States really has no counseling apparatus. We have [300] to 400 students for every counselor in high school," he says.

Meanwhile, Carnevale says, college guidance offices are generally geared toward fulfilling curriculum requirements rather than shaping long-term career goals and expectations.

'If I Had A Time Machine ...'

Timothy Ryan also could have used some extra advice. He has a bachelor's degree in communications from Rowan University in New Jersey.

Carnevale says unemployment for communications majors is "relatively high" at about 8 percent. Ryan says he had no idea.

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Prized Burgundies and Bordeaux once served at the presidential palace in France were for sale for the first time ever as the wine cellar at Elysee Palace gets an overhaul.

Some 1,200 bottles, or 10 percent of the palace wines, went on sale this week at the famous Drouot auction house in downtown Paris. On the block were vintages from 1930 to 1990, including famous names such as Chateau Latour, Chateau Mouton Rothschild and Montrachet.

Before the sale, one of the auction's organizers, wine expert Juan Carlos Casas, showed me the highest valued wine on the block — a bottle of Bordeaux Petrus that will fetch anywhere from $3,000 to $4,000 at auction, and retails for about $7,000.

"This is one of the stalwarts of the international wine code," he says. "It's a wine that everybody wants in their cellar." But he says the Elysee no longer wants to serve expensive, grand cru — first growth wines — at state dinners.

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Will French Election Mark A Reversal Of Austerity?

Prized Burgundies and Bordeaux once served at the presidential palace in France were for sale for the first time ever as the wine cellar at Elysee Palace gets an overhaul.

Some 1,200 bottles, or 10 percent of the palace wines, went on sale this week at the famous Drouot auction house in downtown Paris. On the block were vintages from 1930 to 1990, including famous names such as Chateau Latour, Chateau Mouton Rothschild and Montrachet.

Before the sale, one of the auction's organizers, wine expert Juan Carlos Casas, showed me the highest valued wine on the block — a bottle of Bordeaux Petrus that will fetch anywhere from $3,000 to $4,000 at auction, and retails for about $7,000.

"This is one of the stalwarts of the international wine code," he says. "It's a wine that everybody wants in their cellar." But he says the Elysee no longer wants to serve expensive, grand cru — first growth wines — at state dinners.

Europe

Will French Election Mark A Reversal Of Austerity?

In 2004, Peter Obetz was in the middle of a divorce when he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer.

"Food would get stuck down my throat, and it got worse and worse, so I met with my doctor. I had a tumor on my esophagus wall," says Peter, 48, during a visit to StoryCorps in Kansas City, Mo.

His doctor told him surgery carried a 10 percent risk of death. "I remember telling the doc, 'You mean to tell me like one guy on my softball team isn't going to make it?' There's 10 guys on the team. He said, 'Yeah, that's pretty much it. We can either do the surgery tomorrow or we can wait till Tuesday.' "

That's when he called his best friend, Jeff Jarrett, 52, who told him he needed to get the surgery as soon as possible. "I spent the day with your parents. And the surgeon met with us just after the surgery was completed and drew a graph," Jeff says. The graph showed Peter's percentages of survival over time.

"It started out at 90 percent on the day of the surgery and fell to 15 percent after five years," Jeff says. "That was my scariest moment — that there was only a 15 percent chance that I was going to have my best friend with me five years from now. The next day, you'd caught your mother with that little graph that the doctor had drawn and she wouldn't show it to you. And so I'd come in, and you said, 'I want you to sit down and tell me everything. So I did.' "

"I remember saying, 'I'm toast,' " Peter says.

"Your mom had said that to the surgeon. The surgeon said, 'No, he's lightly brown. He's not toast,' " Jeff says.

Cancer was a wake-up call Peter says he may have needed. "I was in a job where I was miserable, and it gave me the permission to leave," he says. "I went from making a lot of money to making very little and being happier."

He sold his big house and moved to an apartment. Not long after he moved, a unit downstairs opened up and Jeff moved in. "The only time usually that you live right next door to your best friend is when you're a kid because often your next-door neighbor is by default your best friend," Peter says.

"Exactly. Second-graders aren't that picky," Jeff says.

"When I think of every aspect of my life: My marriage has changed, my job has changed, where I live has changed. Our friendship is really the only thing that's constant," Peter says. "That's probably the greatest gift that you could've given me."

"When you were sick, everybody wanted to say, 'Peter, I love you so much, I'm so grateful for our friendship,' " Jeff says. "But I feel so lucky that if anything would have happened to you, there was never any ambiguity about how you feel about me or I feel about you. I love you very, very much."

"I love you too, man."

Peter's been cancer-free since 2009.

Audio produced for Morning Edition by Jud Esty-Kendall.