I'm sick of hearing about the quarterlife crisis!

The BBQ Pit
81

The phrase “quarter life crisis” is rather silly, I agree. But it can be a rather crappy time to go through (and I agree that people only think it’s NOW a ‘crisis’ because of the availability of online messageboards etc to rant).

That being said, it sure sucks. I graduated last May and live in a state with one of (if not the) highest unemployment rates in the nation. I was also in the first generation to go to college in my family; my mom raised us with the belief that a college education was golden; employers would fawn all over you.

This is because she couldn’t go to college and was repeatedly passed up for jobs because of this. While that’s understandable, she doesn’t get that a bachelor’s degree is basically the new high school diploma. So on top of me feeling crappy about just having found a semi-decent (though not great) job that’s not related to either of my two degrees, I have her disappointed and occasionally screaming at me how I must be doing something wrong because I have two college degrees so obviously I should start out making at least $50K a year, like my brother. The fact that my brother graduated when the economy and job market were great and he’s an electrical engineer (while I did Computer Science (hello, burst bubble!)) doesn’t enter her mind. It also doesn’t count how I know someone who graduated with a triple major (Comp Eng, EE and Math) and it took him 5 months to find a job, and it’s a travelling job that has no guarantee of how much he’ll work.

82

I think we’ve got someone around here who was able to do that. It does seem to be possible more often for those outside the major metro areas and away from the coasts.

83

Actually, in some areas it’s cheaper than renting. I bought my first house at 21, then sold it at 24 after the divorce. We paid less on our monthly mortgage payment than we ever had in rent, and this is in a medium-sized metropolitan area. We were able to get an FHA mortgage, which certainly helped. I wanted to keep it and rent it out but my ex couldn’t keep up his end of things so we had to sell. I’m kicking myself for not finding a way to hang on to it, as the value has gone up considerably since we sold. It’s been two years though and I’ve saved up enough for another downpayment, and will be looking to buy again next year. But then I’ll be 26, not 25 so I guess I don’t really count :smiley:

And for the record, it’s hardly a ‘cadillac problem’. I worked full time at a video store and drove a beat-up old sedan with 70k+ miles on it at the time, and was going to school full time. Actually, I’m still doing all that, except I have a bit of a nicer job now.

84

Okay, I’m the type who has never defined myself by my job, and I rarely define others by their jobs.

Maybe this is a factor in who will or won’t go through the QLC?

85

Or maybe these are just a bunch of whiny kids that realized they can’t have their own way for their entire life.

for background, I’m 30. Didn’t get to go to college right out of high school because I had to support myself, had zero financial help from anyone. So I got a job and took care of myself. Bought a house when I was 23, but lost it a few years later when I was disabled by illness for about a year and lost my job. Got to the point where I didn’t have ANY money at all. I mean, no cash in my pocket and unable to take 20 bucks from the ATM due to no funds.

Things turned around though, my BF was wonderful. Helped me to locate a job where I could start parttime (I was still recovering) and start getting my life back together. That was 4ish years ago. Now, we live here in LA in a beautiful apartment, I have a great job and am planning my 5th anniversary with my man.

Point of this little saga being, whining because you don’t know what to do with your life is NOT A CRISIS. Suck it the fuck up, grow up and deal with life.

86

When I think of the word “crisis” in this context, I think it means more “everything has been turned upside-down; everything’s different and I don’t quite know what to do or who I am anymore” rather than “oh my God my life is over this is horrible poor me!”
One thing I’m just starting to realize is that the world really is not my oyster. My parents went out of their way to make sure I knew that, but everyone else’s parents told them they could do anything. I thought my parents were dumb and I was smart and I could be a model or a gymnast or an astronaut if I wanted to. I’d show them and then what were they going to do about it?

I realized when I was about nine that I couldn’t be a gymnast. Over the next few years, I realized I’d probably never be an astronaut, I certainly couldn’t be an artist, I’d never make money as a poet, I really didn’t want to do the entry-level type stuff it would take to be a judge or president, and just being a mother doesn’t earn any money.

Now I’m realizing more and more what opportunities I do not have. I can’t just decide I want to be an actress. It’s already too late for me if I want to be an astronaut. I don’t have any kind of talent at all that would let me be a painter, and even if I did it’s not a viable source of income. If I were a teacher, I would be poor for the rest of my life. I can’t train dolphins for a living, I can’t be a pirate when I grow up, etc. etc. ad nauseum.

Is this the end of the world? of course not. I’m still clinging to the dream that I could join a dance company and do that for at least a few years and I’m working my butt off to get enough scholarship money that I can go to college and still have an awesome career. But it is a mnor crisis becuase my perception of the world and my place in it is being overturned. And I’m not even out of high school yet. I imagine when I get to college and get out of college, my perception of the world will change radically and rather suddenly.

Also, I think young people (myself included) lack perspective. I mean, I’m on here every day with a new “crisis.” My best friend told me I had no talent and shouldn’t have gotten a part in the play! the horror! my mom stole my diet pepsi and drank it! I might as well die now! My dad made me cry! My life is full of tears! Looking back at those after a week, they seem really stupid, but they sure seemed important at the time.

The other thing is, things always look different in retrospect. You, at 37 or whatever, know that you got through your twenties just fine. You know that you finished high school and there was some drama, but you survived and it doesn’t seem that important anymore. But do I know I’ll get through it? no, I don’t. Not for sure. I don’t know for sure that I’ll make it, that I’ll be able to afford that nice apartment where I can have my cat and not get shot. I don’t even know if I’ll survive high school and graduate alive. It’s easy to say, “it wasn’t that bad” looking back. It’s almost like a little kid screaming and crying and terrified on a roller coaster who gets off in tears and, five minutes later, says, “that was fun. can I do it again?”

87

[Bolding mine]

This seems to be a popular sentiment in this thread. Does anyone have any support for it?

In a society where 1 in 4 black males does not graduate high school, I’m thinking a sizable chunk of today’s youth have seen their fair share of difficulties.

Indeed, for all groups, the 70’s and 80’s saw the growth of problems the likes of which few preceding generations have faced–far more violence in schools and on the street, much higher rates of suicide and depression, skyrocketing eating disorders, more single-parent families, worsening urban decay, the list goes on and on.

I don’t doubt that you correctly identify some sub-section of the population, probably white and upper-middle-class suburbanites, that have had easier lives than preceding generations. But for many people that grew up during this period faced problems unimagined by their parents.

88

You are a whole lot wiser than I was when I was in high school, as evidenced by the above post. You rock, girl.

89

It seems a lot of people are cracking on the people who whine about this for calling it a “crisis”. But how many are those people saying, “I’m having a CRISIS! This is a quarter life CRISIS”? Seems to me that it’s the outside looking-in people who have named it that. The people who seem to be going through it just say it sucks and this label is applied to their “pain” by a third party. In this case, I’d hardly say it’s the fault of the person in question that someone else labelled their hard time as a crisis when they likely have never applied it themselves.

90

You guys need to get a fucking clue here. Nobody’s sitting around going “oh, I have a quarter-life crisis, whatever shall I do”, any more than somebody says “I’m having a midlife crisis and my penis won’t stand up anymore, I need to buy a Maserati.” This is just a media term for problems that they notice a lot of people having. Those of you who are jumping on this as an opportunity to read a page off this week’s Angry Old Farts talking points are simply a bunch of judgemental, ignorant wankers.

91

In my FAR from humble opinion, white middle- and upper-class kids would be far more likely to willingly have a label slapped on themselves. Like their mothers, who will sheepishly grin and admit that they’re “helicopter moms.”

It sort of seems (to me) that if a monirity is plastered with a label they fight it (rightly, IMO); if a middle- or upper-class white person is, it seems … SEEMS … as though they’re more likely to grab hold of it and use it as an excuse to continue poor or damaging behavior.

DISCLAIMER:
Note all of those “seems.” I don’t have training in sociology or psychology or minority relations or what-have-you. This is all stuff to which I hadn’t given much thought before I started typing this post.

92

I’m 28, and while, like many, I also busted ass in school and worked hard at a series of unfulfilling jobs, it never got to me that much. For one thing, I didn’t have any student loans, which was a huge help. I deliberately went to state schools (for both graduate and undergraduate degrees) that offered me a good scholarships instead of going for the Ivy League.

But, and I think this is important, the adults in my life while I was growing up didn’t look to work to fulfill them personally. Work was what you did to pay the bills and, hopefully, you worked at a decent job with nice people. But fulfillment came from primarily from your family, then from your friends and your hobbies. I find myself in the same boat now. I like my job and I’m good at at it, but I’m not passionate about it. I don’t particularly want to be passionate about it. It seems that many folks in their 20s think their job needs to be their Calling, and they get upset if it’s not.

93

Exactly. I have friends for whom it was “that bad.” They didn’t survive it. They were told to stop whining and to tough it out and they couldn’t.

Some of us make it through by the skin of our teeth. Some sail. Some don’t make it. This is true of every point in life, every day, every moment.

I wish I could be so sneering and confident that people are just whining, but I’ve seen crisis, and I know that from the outside it is indistinguishable from whining.

94

I am 44, and have always worked, in many different jobs, through my more Bohemian states of living, hand to mouth, while living a wonderful artistic life that was more mind expanding than the regular perks would afford. But, wouldn’t have traded that great life experience for the world. Was young, travelled always, and was so glad to do that. Right now, am fairly lienently comfortable, with no regrets.

I do sympathise with twenty somethings now, though: I cannot imagine the overarching pressure of media to be some perfect being, coupled with the pressure of the current political administration to capitulate to some intricate , I’ll be generous here, fabrication.

I think my younger cohorts have so much more on their plates to deal with than we did at their age. I’ll vote for listening to those complaints, with great attention, and figuring out a way to make a better working life for all of us.

Leave it at that, but would like to hear from younger people your ideas in how to make it better. I for one, am all open ears.

95

This particular sub section IS the people who are having a “quarter life crisis”. Much like a mid-life crisis happens to men like my Dad, not your average bricklayer who’s still struggling to pay his bills and terrified that his body’s giving out.

People raised in adversity (or, well, even reality) don’t go through this. My boyfriend, who grew up poor, never had this at all. It never occured to him. Got a job? Got a roof? Got dinner? Well, that’s something to be thankfull for. As I said before, it’s a rocky adjustment coming around to that when you’re raised to think suffering is having to use make-up from the drug store, and that Daddy will always, always rescue you.

While the boomers have led somewhat more charmed lives, I can’t say that on a whole life is not better than preceding generations. Modern American poverty has nothing on old-fashioned american poverty. Baring instances of neglect, children in america aren’t starving or freezing to death. They’re not working in mines. They’re not living and dying on the street at a young age. No one is living ten people in two-room, one-window tenament with no sanitation facilities and no heat. The expectation that all one’s children (even if you are grindingly poor) will almost certainly live to adulthood is an incredibly modern concept.

Life is better, at least in the West, and ALL of us (especially us spoiled twentysomethings) really take it for granted.

96

Maybe so. I was referring to the sentiment that kids today have it swell. It wasn’t my impression that most posters were limiting that to a minority of the population.

I don’t disagree with any of this, except to say that the difference we’re discussing is growing up in the 50’s/60’s vs. 70’s/80’s; we’re not talking about the 1930’s. I think there’s an argument to be made that growing up in the 80’s was harder than growing up in the 60’s for most kids–but then again, I don’t really know, nor do I know how we’d even begin to objectively evaluate this.

We do take a lot for granted, I’ll give you that.

97

I don’t know that this is true. I grew up in a project, the daughter of a 19 year old waitress and a small time car radio thief turned meth addict. As a kid, I went through some hard times and lived around people that were going through worse. My mom is great and I never lacked for love, but there was plenty of hardship and as a kid I knew what real poverty (not to mention violence and drug abuse) was.

All my life I head two things- don’t get pregnant and go to college. I figured if I did those two things I’d have it set. I’d have…something at least. I wasn’t expecting for the same people who dropped out of high school to be my managers at my new McJob.

It was, perhaps a dumb thing to think. We sell young kids quite a bill of goods about college. I heard for so long “education is the most important”. I never heard “taking out student loans will fuck up your life just as much as running up the credit cards partying.” I heard “get good grades, you only get one chance at college”, I didn’t hear “you better build that resume or your going to be fucked when you graduate because everyone’s been spending every summer working for free at internships their families hooked them up with”

I couldn’t have known this- nobody in my family had ever dealt with that type of money or realistically knew what jobs a college grad could get. All they knew was I wouldn’t be a house painter or pipe-layer or waitress or factory worker like the rest of the family. The government sent me my financial aid forms and we signed it, figuring that was how it worked. I thought it was my ticket out.

Then came four glorious years of dress-up where everyone was a “poor” student (with professors as fathers and lawyers as mothers) and nobody could have guessed I was any different than them. I was “part of their world”, but then graduation came and they went off to their travels and internships and jobs in their family’s companies and I suddenly realized I didn’t have anywhere to go.

It took a lot of getting over my pride to call up my mom and say “I got a job as a waitress.” It would kill me every day to put on my Denny’s uniform and realize I’d gone all that way to do exactly what my mom was doing at that same age- she tried so hard to do well for me and always put me in science camps and after-school classes and made sure I got everything I could need to get an education even when we couldn’t afford much more than peanut butter to eat. And by gum I did my part, too. And even though I was in the midst of horrible blinding depression and every day was a battle I still managed to graduate with honors.

And yet one year after that graduation that a whole family pinned their dreams on, there I was in that polyester uniform. It was the reality check to kill all reality checks.

Times gone by, things have gotten better and I have been able to do a lot with my life that my parent’s never got the chance to. And I’m confident now that I do have a future outside of the bottom rung, and maybe I will be able to live up to all that promise. But I could have never seen that in December of 2003 when I picked up that phone and told my mom that I finally found a job.

98

Even Sven, if it’s any consolation, I was working for $10/hour for some years after ugrad school. Weren’t you a theater major? You can hone your skills to apply for teaching, advertising, and so on.

My mother drilled the same thing into my head, and I’m glad she did–there’s a wide world of salaried jobs that require any 4 year degree, just any 4 year degree. They do require some skills, but these days colleges are so broadly taught that you have to teach them to yourself (or go to a community college). The jobs that can be reached with the skills straight out of college pay pennies and are pounced upon by starving students. I’m just sorry it took so long for me to figure that out.

99

I have to say, that is a great line. Mind if I borrow it sometime?

100

burundi, I’m with you. I have a job that pays me well, and it’s decent enough, but yeah, who gives a shit? I like to go home at the end of the day and engage in my hobbies, spend time with my boyfriend and just enjoy my life.

In a perfect world, I’d be passionate about every damn thing in my life. But I don’t see that as realistically happening for me. If you’re lucky enough to get it, more power to you.