There was a rather famous Times article several years ago addressing the idea of the quarterlife crisis, a newly-acknowledged phenomenon that occurs after graduating from college, but before marrying, having kids, and all of those other responsibilities.
When we emerge from college, there are several paths that we can take down the road of life. The thing is, all of them kind of suck. One may…
- Begin working for a large corporation, guaranteeing oneself medical insurance, a steady paycheck, and a 40+ hour work week. See also: Tool, narc
- Deny the constraints of one’s undergraduate degree and instead live amongst the proletariat (a.k.a. regular Joes), experiencing what real life is like. Working as a barista and denying one’s wealthy parentage are usual side effects. See also: Hipster
- See the world outside of the glorious U. S. in order to attain a new perspective on one’s life by seeing what other cultures have to offer. See also: Expat, freedom-hater
- Continue one’s education by going on to graduate school, either because one’s interest in academia has yet to wane or because one has a solid twenty-year plan and graduate school is the next logical step. See also: Poor person, spinster
One of the reasons for the emergence of the quarterlife crisis is because our generation has been inundated with the doctrine that we must search for meaning in our lives. Of all the lessons learned from Sesame Street and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, this is the concept that is stuck most prominently in the minds of today’s twenty-year-olds. Whatever we choose to do with our lives must contribute to society in a positive way, it must give us deep satisfaction at the end of the workday, and it must shock and/or awe our parents.
The best part about needing to find our true calling is that the process is coupled with crippling guilt. Does “You don’t know how lucky you have it” sound familiar? Baby boomers want their children to do all the things they never allowed themselves to do, but they’ll also never let the kids forget how goddamned easy life is nowadays.
True, the manual labor we’ve done in our life (if any) hardly compares to the backbreaking work our parents underwent growing up. But, dang, do you have any idea how overstimulated we were as children? We were there for the emergence of in-your-face advertising, the birth and proliferation of the internet, the urgency of cell phones, the rise of video games, reality TV/internet stars that we must care about, Hollywood blockbusters that cause seizures (sorry, I just watched Transformers), and the constant state of IRONY that we must answer to after all of this. Not only do we have to ingest all of these forms of ‘entertainment,’ but we must analyze them, interpret them, and eventually decide how we are above them. It’s no wonder we’re fucked up.
Combine our short attention span with our need to find meaning, and you’re faced with a confused generation. However, the reality of this conflict doesn’t actually hit most of us until we’re forced to stop and make some decisions besides which English class to take next semester.
As a liberal arts graduate, I’ve been struggling for some time to figure out how exactly an MA in psychology fits in this world. In the year and a half since graduation, I’ve worked as a dog-sitter, a tennis instructor, a dishwasher, a file clerk, a prep cook, an intern, a caterer, a secret shopper, and an assistant editor. Oh, and I was once turned down at Hollywood Video for having “the wrong type of personality.”
Most oft-received book on graduation day: Oh, the places you’ll go! I say, give ‘em the truth: Oh, the crippling silence! Oh, the unbearable options!