It’s a great time of year for college seniors.
Graduation.
Liberation.
Trepidation.
Going out in into the real world can be exciting and terrifying at the same time.What happens after graduation, says psychological researcher Marcos Salazar, can be a decade of turbulence.
Salazar’s just-published book, “The Turbulent Twenties Survival Guide,” is the latest entry in a new self-help genre that began in 2001 with Abby Miller’s “Quarterlife Crisis.”
To Salazar, life after college isn’t so much a crisis as an emotional roller coaster. It’s a time when twentysomethings figure out who they are, where they’re going and how they’re going to get food on the table, a roof over their heads, pay off their student loans and–oh, yeah, find love, friendship and purpose along the way.
Older generations may scoff at terms like “postcollege blues,” says Salazar, but that’s because they’ve forgotten what it feels like to find one’s way in a world brimming with too much possibility.
Add in today’s rapidly changing ultra-competitive global economy, outsourced entry-level jobs, and a sometimes profound disconnect between what colleges teach and what employers need, says Salazar, and you’ve got millions of anguished twentysomethings who didn’t think it was going to be like this.
“All the graduation speeches say ‘Be true to yourself,’ but how exactly do you do that?” Salazar asks. “It’s an evolutionary process, psychologically, and there’s no one magic bullet.”
It doesn’t help that parents, neighbors and peers are watching you take the leap.
“There was that expectation to graduate, get a job, start working,” says Elizabeth Kotin, who graduated from UCLA in 2001. “It wasn’t that I felt there was so much pressure with my first job. You’re getting your feet wet. Nobody stays there for 10 years. But I started to realize I wasn’t doing stuff that really interested me. I was living for the weekend to come. Post-college life was a little harder than people had told me.”
It was even more difficult for Abby Miller. That cap and gown took her from accomplished scholar and campus leader to a scared twentysomething, with no sense of purpose.
“I didn’t know what to do with my life,” says Miller, co-author of two “Quarterlife Crisis” books. “My friends were scattered all over the world. I was living at home with my parents, temping and starting over socially too. I didn’t know it was supposed to be this way.”
Those thoughts are echoed by hundreds of twentysomethings on Miller’s quarter lifecrisis.com message boards. Discussion threads carry titles like “I’m told I don’t have a life” and “What on earth ever made me think I wanted to be an administrator???”
The problem, Salazar says, is that it takes more than a diploma and resume to transition from college to the working world. Graduates have to separate from their old identity and leave college behind.
That was the challenge for Ericka Smith. Armed with a degree from Berkeley in architecture and a profession she didn’t like, she continued living like a student.
“I still lived in a sorority for six months [after graduation], so I hung out there,” she says. “Kept doing the college thing, going to bars, maintaining friendships with college friends, not meeting new people.”
After she left the sorority and struck out on her own, it took Smith five job-hops to find her path. She dabbled in marketing, moved to L.A. and moved back again. Finally, at 32, she found her calling as an events planner for the Northern California Alzheimer’s Association, a cause she calls “a personal passion.”
That’s the key, Salazar says. Explore options, listen to your “inner signals,” and find the thing that makes you thrive. And realize it’s an evolution everyone experiences. The happy ones understand that and accept it for the process it is.
Or they luck out.
Or they planned really, really well, and didn’t change their minds.
Berkeley graduate Vu-Bang Nguyen programmed his career path meticulously, right through a master’s degree in city planning. Internships with the city of Berkeley helped him work his way into a comfortable gig as assistant planner for the town of Los Gatos.
But most of his friends still are stuck on the twentysomething roller coaster. They’ve job-hopped, worried and doubted. Part of the problem, Nguyen says, is that they didn’t think about the postgraduation world until they were in it.
“The goal before you’re 18 is really to get into college, not beyond that,” he says. “Especially in high school, the question was never ‘What do you want to do when you grow up?’ It was always ‘Where do you want to go to school?’ “
It was easier for Amber Lunsford. She’d always known she wanted to be a model. She pursued that dream through high school, but when college pressure hit, she dutifully headed off to Cal Poly to study a more practical profession. A year into an architecture degree, the realization hit: “I couldn’t see myself doing that for 30 years.”
She realized this was the time to “try your original dreams, so no one can say you didn’t try.”
So Lunsford dropped out, returned home to Sacramento and found a day job flexible enough to allow her to pursue that dream. Today, at 22, Lunsford is an account administrator at an Oakland, Calif., survey company, with flexible, understanding bosses and a modeling career that is finally taking off.
So what advice can you give someone struggling to navigate the postcollege years?
Find a passion, Salazar says. Listen to that voice within, and know that you’re not alone.
It’s not a crisis. Just life.
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CRISIS CONTROL
Are you having a quarterlife crisis? You’re not alone. And there are books that want to help you.
– “The Turbulent Twenties
Survival Guide,”
by Marcos Salazar
Salazar says there’s no quick fix for this emotionally charged time: “You are losing a major part of your identity [as a student] and figuring out who you are in this brand-new world, where you want to go now. It takes a lot of introspection, learning to listen to your inner signals and your passions.” His book leads readers through the contemplative process and offers questions and tips to help twentysomethings increase their emotional intelligence–the self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills necessary to survive in the work world. Find out more at www.turbu lenttwenties.com.
“Quarterlife Crisis,”
by Abby Wilner (now Miller) and Alexandra Robbins
“The Quarterlifer’s Companion: How to Get on the Right Career Path, Control Your Finances, and Find the Support Network You Need to Thrive,”
by Abby Wilner and Catherine Stocker
There is comfort in knowing that you’re not alone, and the “Quarterlife Crisis” books provide plenty of that. The second book also offers budgeting worksheets, insurance tips, even recipes. Miller says what helped her was “knowing that there wasn’t necessarily something wrong with me, that it was normal to experience this crisis, feel lost and confused. And also not focusing so much on work but also developing a life outside of work, getting involved in the community. It’s a great way to meet people and a great way to accomplish something, feel good about something. It gives you that feeling of belongingness, and you really need it when you’re on your own for the first time.”
Visit www.quarterlifecrisis.com for book information, workshop announcements and discussion boards for twentysomethings.
— KRT
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REDEYE ON THE SPOT
RedEye asked Chicagoans if they’ve experienced–or believe in–the twentysomething meltdown.
“A bunch of my friends just graduated this spring, and I don’t think any of them knows what they’re doing beyond college. Personally, I know exactly what I’m doing. I’ve got internships, a career path, I’m pretty sure of where I’m going, so I don’t think it happens to everybody. But this is definitely a very transitional time, and it can be very stressful.”
Jennifer Lesniewicz
[ 21, Near North Side ]“There’s an idea that you should have a career, a life, be established in a house with a family by the time you’re 30. I’m not. I’m still trying to find out who I am. My parents and grandparents are putting pressure on me to settle down though.”
Todd Rhoades
[ 29, Edgewater ]“Honestly, I think it’s a little melodramatic for a 20-year-old to say they’re having a midlife crisis. We’re having the time of our lives. I think it’s a little overdramatic to say you have all these problems; people who are twice our age and have mortgages, car payments, kids, responsibility, they’re under a lot more stress.”
Joe Leblanc
[ 21, Rogers Park ]“I’m going to college now, but at first I didn’t know what I was going to do, so I came to Chicago to work for a year. In Mexico, I had everything handed to me, and here I have to pay my own bills. I’m on my own. It’s helped me grow up and figure out where I’m going. I decided I want to go to school; I’m not ready to go to work.”
Jorge Barceinas
[ 19, Lakeview ]– – –
Talk to us
Have you experienced a quarterlife crisis? If so, what was the worst part? Send your opinion–and full name, age and neigborhood–to ritaredeye@tribune.com
