College students are notorious for being poor, but a lecturer on Thursday showed audience members that poverty doesn’t necessarily end at graduation.

Journalist and author Barbara Ehrenreich spoke in Van Meter Hall last week to an almost-full house. Ehrenreich is the author of “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America” and “Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream.”

Ehrenreich discussed her experiences investigating for and writing “Nickel and Dimed” and the discoveries she made in the process.

Ehrenreich took several minimum-wage jobs and tried to support herself to determine if people could survive on minimum wage. She realized it was a very difficult and sometimes impossible task.

She said she also discovered that jobs classified as “unskilled” are challenging and she no longer describes those jobs as unskilled. She gave the example of memorizing the entire ladies’ wear section of Wal-Mart during her research for “Nickel and Dimed.” The layout of the section would change every few days.

“I found out something about retail – it makes you hate customers because they mess things up,” she said.

The idea for the book came from a discussion with a magazine editor. She told him that someone should investigate surviving on minimum wage by doing it themselves. He assigned the story to her.

“I had what seemed to me the assignment from hell,” she said.

Her discussion of class also raised issues of sexism and racism.

She said women aren’t promoted as much as men at Wal-Mart, and discussed a component of the welfare reform of 1996 which mentioned chastity education for women. Ehrenreich said this implied that poverty was caused by issues such as promiscuity and alcoholism.

“I have my own theory about poverty – it’s caused by a lack of money,” she said.

She said she was also steered toward better jobs in her search because she was white.

Ehrenreich has gone on to write a follow-up book, “Bait and Switch,” where she attempts to get hired in a white-collar position.

Greenville freshman Katrina Garrett hadn’t read “Nickel and Dimed,” but liked what Ehrenreich said.

“I thought most of her points were right on,” she said.

Bowling Green freshman Josh Martin came to the lecture because he wanted to hear what Ehrenreich had to say.

“I thought what she said was pretty enlightening,” Martin said. However, he said he thought her lecture was one-sided at times.

Ehrenreich was part of the decade-old Cultural Enhancement series, said David Lee, dean of Potter College. Most speakers or other performers cost the university about $12,000 to $15,000 to be a part of the series.

The Lark Quartet will be at Van Meter Hall on April 6 as the next part of the series.