Through talking to my young single adult peers and contemplating various blogs, articles, books, songs, movies, and TV shows, I have come to the realization that I am SUCH a product of my generation. There are many names – Generation Me, Generation Y, Millennials, etc. – for the group of us born in the 1980s. I am in my mid-20s. I am having a lot of fun and learning a lot. I also feel insecure and vulnerable at times. I realize that almost all my peers are going through the same reality whiplashes of this “defining decade”, our 20s. Allow me to use myself as a case study of The Quarter Life Crisis:
1) Drawn out college years – I stayed in my undergraduate degree for as long as I could (5.5 years) and picked up a minor along the way (though I have enough credits for 3 minors) because I loved the in-between growing stage between high school and adulthood. College is a unique cocoon-like time when we’re allowed to take risks, try new things, make mistakes, and actively find and create ourselves. We have relative independence and not as many responsibilities yet. We could still explore and not be expected to live up to “what we want to be when we grow up”, which can cause great pride or anxiety when posed as a question.
2) Moved across the country – 7 months after graduation, I tried but couldn’t achieve my career goals in my college town, so I moved from the West to a big East Coast city to “chase my dreams” (I had/have many). It has been a big adventure. Sometimes I still stop and think incredulously, “I work and study in the nation’s capital. How did this happen!?” The emotional and social transitions are taking a much longer time to play out than the physical transition.
3) Career crisis – I’ve tried a few options since college graduation and I thought I finally figured out a career path I could be passionate about. It took hard work, trials of faith and tenacity, and a few detours. But now that I’m on this path and confronted with the bleak reality of the job market [in academia], I am trying to figure out how to go back to a former option. Ironically, I want to go into career counseling, to help other people avoid the drawn out, roundabout path I’m currently taking! Though it might seem quaint, I admire those people who have known exactly what they wanted to be from a young age and followed the smooth and straight path to achieve it.
4) Blog(s) – I have 3 (see right sidebar) that serve different themes. We are the first generation to have almost entirely grown up with the internet, which offers an unprecedented forum for sharing our personal thoughts, feelings, travels, pictures, crafts, videos, music, art, etc. Private journals and physical photo albums have given way to shameless public declarations of the minute and monumental moments of our lives through tweets, Facebook statuses, instagram pictures, and blog posts like this one (guilty). We want to be known, we want to be heard, we want to be validated.
5) Compulsive multi-tasker – We feel like we all have ADD because we feel compelled to constantly check our devices and social media (email, texts, Facebook, Twitter, voicemail, etc.). Whether it’s because we’re bored or lonely, our need to always be “in touch” is feeding our FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), the ubiquitous plague of our generation. Because we are more accessible, others expect more of us. There is a vicious cycle in media: messages shortened to fit our diminishing attention spans, which then decreases our opportunities to practice reading longer (more detailed and developed) material. We have a hard time concentrating on one task for very long when it is required. How many distractions did I have had while writing this post?
6) Relationships...yea – Around our mid-20s, our friends and family start to [un]tactfully ask us when we'll get married and have children. The pressure mounts, magnified by social media, with more of our friends getting married. Almost every Mormon young single adult I’ve talked to has said in a tone denoting their simultaneous disbelief and disappointment, “I didn’t expect to still be single at this age”. As a whole, our generation is getting married later in life than any previous generation due to various economic, political, and cultural reasons. Whether that is a deliberate decision or not; we still all yearn for meaningful fulfilling relationships, but either we haven't found the right person yet or we're not ready to commit/settle down. Since the success of romantic relationships is out of our control, we try to focus on ways we can continue to progress and improve ourselves in order to prepare ourselves (not that progress and improvement stop at marriage; quite the opposite really) to attract a suitable [eternal] companion.
Yes, I am a product of my times, but not a victim to it. The cliches of our generation can be used to our advantage or disadvantage. Every generation has its unique challenges and opportunities. I am a dogged optimist so I am determined to thrive, not just survive my 20s. This, too, shall pass. I don’t want to just say I lived through it, I want to be able to say I lived fully IN it.
