The Terrible Uncertainty of Being in Your Early 20s
The year right after you graduate college is not a fun year.
It’s more like a brutal reality check, or an abrupt transition to adulthood that’s more like somebody pushing you roughly into the deep end of the pool without even checking first if you can swim. No matter how well prepared you are — you’ve done countless internships, picked your new apartment in advance, heard the same-old advice — you’re still going to be surprised, one way or another.
I graduated six months ago, and this is easily the most confusing period of my life.
That’s saying a lot. I was the classic can’t-decide-what-to-do kid, although that was more of because I kept running away from what I wanted to do deep down. I nearly double-majored in Philosophy, shifted around to three different variations of Chemistry then landed in Computer Science, and aborted my Creative Writing minor. Oh, and I tried out graphic design, and web development, and UX design, and digital marketing, and none of them have stuck definitively with me.
I definitely felt lost during college. Then I assumed it would get better once I graduate — I wouldn’t have to deal with a degree that I didn’t connect with much, and I’d be free to go out on my own.
The result?
It kinda got worse.
The existential question of what you should do with your life takes on an intense amount of pressure now that it becomes an issue of survival. You can’t stop at what would I be good at or love doing?, you have to factor in what would give me a good life, both financially and otherwise?
The tiny, jarring realities come one after the other: getting your government documents, learning how to pay taxes, moving out, struggling with a bunch of recipes and the miserable-looking goop of food that you’re now supposed to feed yourself with, the insanity of traffic, adapting to a clockwork-regulated schedule that leaves you with little time when you were so used to the opposite back in college.
And the uncertainty hovering over everything.
I can say that I don’t like it and I wouldn’t be lying, but at the same time — to everyone in their early 20s out there, this is probably the most uncertain we will ever be in our entire lives.
And while that’s nerve-wracking and terrible, it’s also something to revel in.
We have no kids yet, no family of our own to think about (there might be college debt, though, and perhaps parents and siblings to send money home to). It’s the optimum period to do something crazy, as Gary Vaynerchuk so passionately puts it. Mistakes lurk at every corner, and yet they’re also at their most forgivable. If you’re going to explore, then now is probably the best time to do it.
But paradoxically, there’s so much responsibility, too. Dr. Meg Jay, author of “The Defining Decade,” points out that your 20s are likely to be your most important decade because that’s when you have the greatest potential to change:
“Our 20s are the defining decade of adulthood. 80% of life’s most defining moments take place by about age 35. 2/3 of lifetime wage growth happens during the first ten years of a career… Personality can change more during our 20s than at any other decade in life. Female fertility peaks at 28. The brain caps off its last major growth spurt. When it comes to adult development, 30 is not the new 20.”
In other words, the direction of your life hasn’t quite been determined yet.
I’m 22, and I’m playing it by ear. Right now I’m not exactly sure where I’m heading — I have my huge bucket list, but no coherent way of bringing it all together, except by proceeding near-blindly one step at a time. The year after this, when I’m 23, I’m probably going to be slightly more certain. And when I’m 30, I would have stuck with a certain path already and invested myself there.
I will never be this uncertain — or this undefined — ever again, and instead of freaking out about it, I will lean into it, I will write about it while I can still capture the feeling, I will appreciate it.
