UNIT 3 beginning draft

Most people are familiar with the term “Mid-life Crisis.” During the Mid-life Crisis, men and women in their 40s and 50s, after realizing their impending death and certain mortality, set out to change the remainder of their lives. Many do this through drastic career alterations, relationship restructuring, traveling, and/or the purchasing of new “stuff”. What many people are not aware of is something that is only recently being recognized as the Quarterlife Crisis. This crisis describes what not all, but many people in their 20s experience when they are thrown from the structured life of academics and curfews into the “real world.” A world of job-searching, soul-searching, and life inquiries. During the period after graduation, twenty-somethings have no choice but to go through major life changes. Some handle the pressures eloquently. Others, to put it simply, freak out.

I intend to look into the lives of twenty-somethings today and specify the various aspects that can initiate and perpetuate the Quarterlife Crisis. Since the Quarterlife Crisis is a fairly recent phenomena, caused much by the increasing pressures and requirements placed upon young people to be considered an adult; the fact that those going through this crisis are also the first generation to have grown up in the Information Age is one not to pass by without consideration. Computers, for twenty-somethings today, have been a necessity, and the internet has been a primary method of communication. I plan to discuss how the Web has impacted emerging adults and how it has become a tool to aid them through this difficult time in their lives.

Erik Erickson, one of Developmental Psychology’s foundation layers, describes adolescence as the period of time in which the average human being must identify who they are. In other words, the adolescent undergoes an “Identity Crisis.” The identity crisis is a time in which the adolescent must explore and analyze the different ways of looking at oneself. (Arnett). This period can be very confusing and frustrating for most. Erickson’s views were prevalent in the 1970's. Today, many psychologists and theorists believe that people go through this important stage in life, not during adolescence, but during the period immediately following adolescence, a period often referred to as “emerging adulthood.” This time occurs between the ages of 18 and 29, when people leave the academic setting and encounter a world of responsibilities and expectations, along with a universal amount of pressure, stress, uncertainty, and confusion. Depression is a major problem for the young people who go out into the “real world” with high hopes and ambitions, only to have them crushed by sudden feelings of unpreparedness and the reality of the difficulty that accompanies job-searching, independence from the family, and exploration of the soul.

The identity crisis that occurs during emerging adulthood has taken on a new name. The term “Quarterlife Crisis” is now recognized by many therapists and professionals in the mental health field. David Weinberger, author of Small Pieces Loosely Joined, might describe the problems that many “twenty-somethings” face as being developed within their own mentality. The tragic and bleak view of life after college may be simply that: a view, a perspective. He states that we possess a default philosophy that says “our mental life consists of inner pictures of the physical world” and that “insanity...happens when our inner picture of the world gets severely out of whack with the way the world is.” (Weinberger 153). Emerging adults do have to take on a lot of life-changes that can be, in the very least, challenging; but the question is: is the quarterlife crisis associated more with the great extent of these challenges or does it come about because young people are mentally unprepared for a real world that is sometimes drastically different than anything they ever dreamed about?

I, myself, am a twenty-something. I avoid responsibility to no end. Sometimes I will go days without looking at my school planner because I am horrified of the psychologically anxious state it will put me in when I gaze down upon the numerous pending assignments I have yet to complete. I’ll go weeks without opening mail that I know will require me to fill out forms, use my brain, or simply “get stuff done.” I’ll make up any excuse to get out of my house so that I will not have to look at the growing piles of mail and school work.

I didn’t always used to be like this. I used to attack projects head on and with confidence. I began making plans for college during my freshman year of highschool and I started collecting information about Graduate school as soon as I began working on my undergraduate degree. However, as I approached the final years of undergraduate school I began to quite literally lose control. I reached a state of academic paralyzation. I didn’t know what I was doing anymore. People around me started talking about taking the GREs and applying to Masters programs. Everywhere I turned there was something or someone reminding me of all this stuff I had to complete in order to be successful...in life. Even now, the things that I feel I should be accomplishing creep into my mind at every possible moment. The completion of school (which I have successfully put off at least another year), the building of a professional career, and the initiation of a valuable romantic relationship have become the things that I avoid most. In their book, Quarterlife Crisis, Alexandra Robbins and Abby Wilner explain that the quarterlife crisis “is a response to overwhelming instability, constant change, too many life choices, and a panicked sense of helplessness.” (Robbins, Wilner 3). They go on to describe the role of procrastination and denial in the lives of many going through the crisis. They say that “a big part of twentysomethings’ attempts to adjust to their new lives involves stalling like they have never stalled before.” (Robbins, Wilner 8).

So here I am. I live at home with my mother. All of the people I know that began college at the same time as me are graduating this spring, while I remain stuck and unmotivated. I reject any prospective boyfriends when I feel their interest in me is too strong, and instead focus my energies on going after those whom I know I can’t have. I no longer have any idea of what I want to do with my life. I am putting off my entrance into the “real world” in order to avoid acquiring the responsibilities that accompany being an adult. I am having a Quarterlife Crisis.

Although feelings of being alone during this stressful period of life are common to the Quarterlife Crisis, I am aware that I am not alone when it comes to this matter. Weblogs on the World Wide Web have provided a way for emerging adults to express their feelings of solitude, confusion, and frustration with others on the internet. Through weblogs, people have the ability to vent all of their problems with the option of remaining anonymous if desired. In browsing the Web for just a few moments, I was able to find dozens of blogs written by twenty-somethings that embodied the overall feeling of a quarterlife crisis, without any of them being at all similar in actual content. The blogs I came across did, however, share certain similarities. They all dealt with a young person going through life changes that posed challenges and problems for them. Each twenty-something is simply trying to figure him/herself out by writing and contemplating about his/her life and life in general.

Ms. Murder is the title of a weblog written by a young lady who writes simply about her life and the challenges (as well as mundane events) that present themselves as she lives day to day. She struggles a lot with feelings of depression and she uses her blog as a way to organize her thoughts as well as to get input from her readers. On March 20, 2007 she posted an entry entitled “Quacks Claim Quarterlife Crisis???” In it, she describes her mood (annoyed), her behavior (relating to depression), a reason for this behavior and/or mood (the loss of her job), and the surprising suggestion given to her by her doctor for getting her through her slump, along with an inquiry to whomever happened to be reading the entry about whether or not she should take her doctor’s advice. She says,

“I almost want to deny the fact that I dread leaving the house for ANY reason whatsoever, but its become rather a bother to the people around me.....I don’t like the malls, stores, eateries, coffee shops, the movies, my neighbors or roads. I don’t want people to come over or even see them, I don’t want to talk on the phone....., sign on messenger or even check my pod-thingy's like this......Its kind of hard climbing down from a workoholic lifestyle to "woah my gosh, free time!" But I have however rediscovered my life is exactly where I left off last summer. I don’t know if its tragic that I "quit 'living' because I lived for work" or the fact that "I’ve made no further progression in my life/myself". Either way, the finding are terminally devistating......I mourn for no reason and sparatically. My suggested I see a doctor and Dr. McKenzie suggested I buy this book:
'Get it Together: A Guide to Surviving Your Quarterlife Crisis' by D. Barr.....Im interested but I still don’t really buy-it as a visable 'illness' or excuse for feeling a little run down. Bah.....What do you think I should do?”

Ms. Murder helps to describe a component that contributes to the pressures felt by many twenty-somethings today. The idea that one’s job defines who one is becomes an area of great distress to a person who is going through an identity crisis. Many emerging adults feel that they are to figure out exactly what to do with their lives as soon as they graduate college and that the type of employment they choose to go into, will ultimately define who they are as people. Thus, like in Ms Murder’s case, when there is a loss of a job, or in the case of many twenty-somethings, when uncertainty attaches itself to career choices, a problem of unknown identity emerges.

Robbins and Wilner address this topic in Quarterlife Crisis. They provide anecdotes and quotes given by twenty-somethings experiencing identity challenges. One female says,

“When I graduated and wasn’t defined anymore by what I was studying and where I went to school, I was really struck by how much I didn’t have my ‘self’ figured out.....I think people, especially in American middle- and upper-class culture, go directly from college to defining themselves by their jobs. This makes me quite uneasy.” (Robbins & Wilner 17).

A main contributing component to a Quarterlife Crisis is the reality, and sometimes the illusion, of time. Robbins and Wilner explain that twenty-somethings feel pressure to accomplish many of their goals by the time they reach their thirties and that the choices they make in their twenties will undoubtedly influence the rest of their lives. (Robbins & Wilner 9). David Weinberger, in Small Pieces Loosely Joined, devotes an entire chapter to the discussion of the concept of time.