How Do You Recognize a Quarterlife Crisis?

Quarterlife Crisis: The Unique Challenges of Life in Your Twenties
by Alexandra Robbins, Abby Wilner

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While at its heart the quarterlife crisis is an identity crisis, it causes twentysomethings' conflicting emotions to show up in different ways. Sometimes they reach a state of panic sparked by a feeling of loss and uncertainty. When the carefree euphoria that accompanies graduation wanes, many twentysomethings realize that things seem to be missing from their lives. The friends who were just around the corner in college have scattered, the social life that had been as easy as meeting someone in the bathroom down the hall has dissipated, and the mandatory assignments that provided structure and purpose have (however thankfully) been completed. Whether they immediately begin a frantic online job search or collapse into a vegetative state in front of Comedy Central, it eventually sets in that things have changed. The world is suddenly unfamiliar as graduates come to realize that four or more years of higher education have hardly prepared them for the decisions they will have to make and the ways in which they will have to learn to support themselves. Twentysomethings often feel that the only means they have for navigating the seemingly endless choices looming ahead of them is trial and error, which is really just a productive-sounding euphemism for guesswork. Welcome to the casino: the confusion and helplessness that strike millions of twentysomethings soon after graduation is frequently the result of the feeling that they are about to gamble. Often. On their lives.

For some people the quarterlife crisis is both a cause and an effect of procrastination and denial. Building on the image of that guy who is vegging in front of the television, a big part of twentysomethings' attempts to adjust to their new lives involves stalling like they have never stalled before. Granted, many ambitious students line up jobs while they are still in school. But by the same token, many do not. And even the ones who do still find their transition is far from seamless. Some of this difficulty may have to do with the fact that the once-reliable support network of parents and relatives is not quite sufficient anymore. The economic landscape, which is even now constantly changing for twentysomethings, differs greatly from the landscape of their parents' generation. Dot coms did not exist. The technology sector was piddling compared to what it is now. Aspiring doctors went to medical school, lawyers went to law school, and teachers attained degrees in education. Job and life patterns were more clear-cut, and there was less emphasis on "love what you do" in favor of "support the family." People married and had children at a much younger age. Things were different. What this means for today's graduates is that, because job opportunities have changed so drastically in the past generation, they must place much more accountability on themselves. Frequently that is something they are not yet ready to accept.

Another way the quarterlife crisis can show up, particularly in the mid- to late twenties, is in a feeling of disappointment, of "This is all there is?" Maybe the job turns out to be not so glamorous after all, or maybe it just doesn't seem to lead anywhere interesting. Perhaps the year of travel in Europe was more of a wallet buster than previously imagined-even with nights in youth hostels and meals of ramen. Or maybe the move to a hip, new city just didn't turn out to be as fabulous a relocation as expected.

While these are, according to older generations, supposed to be the best years of their lives, twentysomethings also feel that the choices they make during this period will influence their thirties, forties, fifties, and on, in an irreparable domino effect. As a result, twentysomethings frequently have the unshakable belief that this is the time during which they have to nail down the meaning in their lives, which explains why they often experience a nagging feeling that somehow they need to make their lives more fulfilling. This is why there are so many drastic life changes at this point in life: an investment banker breaks off his engagement and volunteers for the Peace Corps; a consultant suddenly frets that consulting may not really have that much influence on other people's lives; a waiter chucks the steady paycheck to live in his car and try to make it in Hollywood; a law school graduate decides she doesn't want to be a lawyer after all and seeks a job in technology.

The changes hurtling toward a young adult, as well as the potential for more changes ahead, can be excruciatingly overwhelming for someone who is trying so hard to figure out how to feel fulfilled. A lot of people don't realize just how suffocating this pressure can be. The prevalent belief is that twentysomethings have it relatively easy because they do not have as many responsibilities as older individuals. But it is precisely this reduced responsibility that renders the vast array of decisions more difficult to make. For instance, if there were, say, a family to consider, a mother might not be as inclined to take a risk on the stock market. If a guy's elderly father were sick, he probably wouldn't take that year off to travel in South America. Twentysomethings, for the most part, just aren't at those stages yet, which is why they are sometimes envied. But because their choices aren't narrowed down for them by responsibilities, they have more decisions to make. And while this isn't necessarily bad, it can make things pretty complex. Figuring out which changes to make in order to make life more fulfilling is hard enough. But deciding to make a change and then following through with it requires an extraordinary amount of strength, which is sometimes hard to come by for a recent graduate who has not had to rely solely on himself for very long.

The most widespread, frightening, and quite possibly the most difficult manifestation of the quarterlife crisis is a feeling that can creep up on a twentysomething whether he is unemployed, living at home, and friendless, or in an interesting job, with a great apartment, and dozens of buddies. Regardless of their levels of self-esteem, confidence, and overall well-being, twentysomethings are particularly vulnerable to doubts. They doubt their decisions, their abilities, their readiness, their past, present, and future...but most of all, they doubt themselves. The twenties comprise a period of intense questioning-of introspection and self-development that young adults often feel they are not ready for. The questions can range from seemingly trivial choices-"Should I really have spent $100 to join that fantasy baseball league?"-to irrefutably mammoth decisions-"When is the right time for me to start a family?" It is healthy, of course, for people to question themselves some; an occasional self-assessment or life inventory is a natural part of the quest for improvement. But if the questioning becomes constant and the barrage of doubts never seems to cease, twentysomethings can feel as if it is hard to catch their breath, as if they are spiraling downward. Many times the doubts increase because twentysomethings think it is abnormal to have them in the first place. No one talks about having doubts at this age, so when twentysomethings do find that they are continuously questioning themselves, they think something is wrong with them.

© May 2001, J.P. Tarcher, a division of Penguin Putnam, used by permission.

About the Author

Alexandra Robbins, a contributing editor at Mademoiselle, is a journalist who has written for such publications as The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The Washington Post, Salon, and Time Digital.

Abby Wilner works in the information technology field as a website administrator and lives in Washington, D.C.