Spring is here and many female college grads will soon report to their first days of work. Even though they join an increasingly female work force, many young women say the transition from school to work is loaded with culture shock.

(WOMENSENEWS)--Brooke MacDonald, 25, who started her first job as a paralegal at a large New York law firm, said she was baffled by the dynamics of the workplace.

"I didn't know the extent to which I could assert myself," she said. "It also was unclear when to push for more to do and when to sit back and wait to be asked to do something, especially if you don't have a great manager or a mentor who is really willing to teach you what is important in the job. In school it is easy to know what to do. At work, however, it is more luck of the draw."

MacDonald, like many other young women, found it hard to handle her office's subculture. "It wasn't clear how you were supposed to interact with bosses and when you are allowed to speak up for yourself. Basically, I didn't know what it takes to succeed besides being really aggressive, an area I wasn't particularly adept at," MacDonald said.

Women now outnumber men in many incoming freshman classes, according to recent statistics. Three-fifths of National Honor Society members are female; women also are reaching parity, if not exceeding men, in a multitude of graduate programs. As of 2000, over 80 percent of women aged 25 to 34 were working, a 17 percent increase from 1975.

And, despite recent media accounts about so-called Gen Y women--those in their late teens and early 20s--wanting to opt out of careers and rear children instead, a March 27 Lifetime Women's Pulse Poll of 801 women indicates a different trend. Conducted for Lifetime Networks by pollsters Kellyanne Conway and Celinda Lake, it found that of three generations of women included, this youngest group of women were the least likely to say they'd leave their careers behind if they didn't need a paycheck.