Am I the only one who hasn’t noticed an unusual number of people of this age whinging about how shit life is? For that matter, I’d not even heard of the “quarter-life crisis” until this thread. Are you sure Oprah’s not making some shit up to fill air time, and that all this get-off-my-lawn-ing isn’t a bit premature? Hell, so far by my count it’s:
Pit threads about how horrible the quarter-life crisis is: 0
Pit threads about how horrible the people whinging about the quarter-life crisis are: 1
Okay, so maybe the Pit isn’t vastly representative, but really. There are real problems when you’re 25, just as there are when you’re 45, and hindsight is awfully convenient. And because no opportunity to quote Peter Cook should go unused:
Gotta agree with FilmGeek. It’s not a BAD time, but it’s a difficult time. The year after you graduate college is tough. You’re faced with some real and very important decisions. What do I want to do with the rest of my life? Where do I live? Many of my friends broke up with their college significant-others, and they’re worried about the future of their romantic life as well.
I’m not saying it’s a hard period of life in concrete terms, but I’d argue it is a pretty hard time psychologically for many people. That’s my current experience, and that of all of my friends (I’m 23).
Oh, horse shit! Just who do you think has created the high-pressure environment that so many of us have learned to hate? The boomers. They didn’t lay back waiting for the American Dream to come to them; once they decided they wanted it after all, they went out and siezed it. And worked like hell to get it. AND spend it, in large part on their kids.
I think it’s far more likely that the current generation, having been raised with every moment supervised and structured, and having been the center of the family’s existence for the first 20 years or so of their lives, are going to be far more likely to lie back and wait for it to come - after all, that’s what’s happened all their lives thus far. And the blame for this lies not with the kids, but with their parents.
Oh, and btw? The divorce rates and anti-depressant use were soaring well before the boomers got to an age where they were contributing to it. Plus tranqs were handed out almost like candy back in the fifties, at least to the upper middle class.
I’ll be the first person to deplore what has become of the boomers in a number of ways, but unfortunately, the ways you mentioned aren’t their flaws (generalizing to a generation - there are many individuals who may well match your description).
Right fable, wrong conclusion. If you are looking at 75 different options and can’t tell which one to pick, it might be because they’re all pretty workable.
The nice version: All you can do is look at the information available to you and make the best decision you know how. If you can’t decide between two choices, it’s because the information you’ve got says they’re about equally good when you consider the factors that are important to you. So relax and have a little faith that you’re smart enough to do the rough weeding out of all the truly bad options, and that deciding between the remaining good options can be safely left to your gut.
As a recent grad myself…folks, don’t get me wrong. You will meet some hard times after college, but it seems that so many people my age would rather complain than take control of their lives.
I’m single, in grad school, not employed full-time, and broke as hell. I’m also having family problems that I’d rather not discuss now. But, you know what? I’m not shitting in my pants. I’m enjoying my life, and more importantly, my youth! I’m pretty confident. Any confidence I do lack does NOT stem from my current situations.
I just get frustrated with my peers because of their lack of risk taking. So many want to play it safe, and then complain that they are not happy.
A lot of their expectations are pretty high also. I think it is unrealistic to expect a high-paying job, nice house, and a husband/wife by the age of 23. Not in these times.
There, thats what I was trying to say, before I went all Fight Club on myself. People come out of college thinking they’re gonna seize the world by the short and curlies, and then they find out that life isn’t really like that. Its a lot of boring, bullshit work. And they get pissed.
Is it societies fault for instilling a need for money and power and fame? Maybe a little.
Is it the young people’s fault for being pissed off when that doesn’t happen? Maybe a little. They don’t have a realistic view of what the world is and how it operates.
Hey, I’ve got a great idea! Since apparently nobody’s entitled to gripe, maybe we should just shut down this forum, and replace it with one called “count your blessings” where everyone says saccharine things about how wonderful their lives are, or at least how happy they are to have a roof over their head and friends who care about them, and how the world will be better tomorrow than it is today, and… :rolleyes:
That’s exactly right - adult life is by and large a series of difficult times in various ways. And that’s where the new grads these days are having particular problems - they have not been brought up to expect or deal with difficult times. The parents, in their laudable intentions to prevent any harm to their children, have instead created a generation that has never had to really learn to deal with problems much.
It’s easy for me to criticize; being childless, I’ve never had to choose between endangering my child (even in extremely improbably ways) or letting him/her suffer, or leaving him/her alone to learn how to cope.
The undertone of “but you don’t understand!” is strange in this thread, and peculiarly immature. It’s almost as if the pro-quarter-life crisis crowd (don’t get excited. It’s just shorthand.) is under the impression that we who are older than them (I assume. I’m 34.) just don’t grok what they’re going through.
We do, man. We all know precisely what it’s like. We were all there at one time, and in retrospect, it wasn’t that bad.
Its not necessarily that. Its that some of the tones of the posts are condenscending and indicating that the “pro-quarter-life crisis crowd” are just lazy, whiny people who just are too immature to deal with real life.
If the tone had been, “Yes, we know its tough. You’ll get used to it.”, that might have been easier to digest.
And again, its hardly a crisis. Its just a difficult time because it’s a major change in your life. It happens to everyone.
Somewhere I ran across the term “helicoper parents”. It’s supposedly a coined term for those parents who, for whatever reasons, never let their children out of their sight for fear that something horrible will happen to them (the children, I mean – excuse the grammar). I have SILS and BILS who adhere to this, even though their kids are now teenagers. Any problem, trivial or not, is handled as “This is the horrible! It’s not your fault!” Consequently, I fear for their independence. Not to slam my in-laws, but I can see their kids running to them for every little mishap when they’re in college and beyond because they have never had any experience solving issues on their own.
If any of you have a LiveJournal, just click on “Random” and you’ll see what I mean. It doesn’t apply to everyone, but there are many. Kind of compels you to want to shake some sense into the parents.
Ditto that. Unless you come out of school with a degree in one of a few fortune-favored majors, you are like the vast majority in that you have to start out in some entry level job that pays sucky wages. It’s just something most people have to get through, and has to be faced and overcome in a mature way.
Doesn’t mean you can’t bitch once in awhile, though.
So what’s OK to gripe about, and what’s too trivial? And who makes the call?
At any rate, a considerable number of posters seem to have never heard of this term that the OP is tired of hearing about. People complaining about their quarterlife crisis hardly seem to be a problem worth griping about, wouldn’t you say?
