Guest Writer: Who Said I Was An Adult?! I Want Names!

It seems as though everyone and their mother (and grandmother and grandfather and second and third cousins) is writing articles on what it means to be a twenty-something.  As though the decade where you hit many major life rites of passage can be described in a twenty-something list of .gifs, vines and memes.  I have chuckled at and shared many of these articles.  I watch old episodes of Friends and think “I’m just like these people,” searching for the funniest BuzzFeed I can find comparing myself to Chandler (As of course I am a Chandler).  I am practically screaming at the top of my internet lungs that I was born in the 1990s and remember all of these pre-internet things.  While this is all superficial and fun games I can’t help but wonder has the internet age of sharing created the more malicious implication of these posts—the urge to be an “adult?”

Every single time (EVERY. SINGLE. TIME) I get together for drinks/workouts/dinner with a friend the topic of marriage and babies comes up.  The dialogue usually involves something along the lines of “Did you see so-and-so procreate/got married?”  It then quickly turns into either a “they are the last people on earth who should be trusted with another human life,” or a “what-the-actual-explicative is wrong with me?”  It’s as though the constant updates from people who in the past I wouldn’t have given a second thought after graduation has created a form of self-doubt that psychologists will study in the future and mark as the moment humanity collectively lost its mind.  I spend an inordinate amount of time reminding myself that I shouldn’t be jealous that Kathy bought a house, I don’t even know where I want to live yet! (Related: I’m 24 years old—I shouldn’t be buying a house!)

When did everyone come to the decision that they wanted to grow up so fast?  I relate to the characters on Friends and they’re in their late 20s when the show BEGINS.  This means that they are a decade ahead of me in years but I have this unrealistic expectation that I too should be knee-deep in my career and family life.  I shouldn’t.  I am not.  I am not and I shouldn’t be.  I am exactly where I should be in life.  I graduated college and went on to a Master’s program right away.  I acted as a Teaching Assistant and had the weirdest experience of having to be an authority figure to people who were just like I was 3 months prior.  I thought back to my experience with Teaching Assistants my freshman year of college at the University of Nebraska before I transferred to a university where all my professors had their doctorate in what they taught (Thanks for being worth my money, Mary Washington!).  The TAs always were either ridiculously hard or so laid back and awesome.  Which one they were differed based upon whether they saw themselves as an “adult” or not.

I didn’t understand it at the time, but it was either acceptance of the weirdness of their situation or overcompensation. The hard TAs were basically saying, “I feel insecure in my position of authority over you so I’m going to ruin your life,” or I imagine that was what it was anyway.  I spent so much time trying to be “professional” that I think I was actually unavailable to the students—which is the exact opposite of what an educator should do.  Then I became a tutor for the athletic department and in my first semester was so formal in my correspondence that I ended up having a lot of students stand me up (which isn’t as bad as it sounds because I still got paid!).  The second semester I realized that if I texted them instead of emailed them they might actually show up, listen to me and learn, because guess what—just like me they were twenty-something’s who are attached to their phone like it’s a good luck charm.  Once I stopped trying to be an “adult,” I actually was able to do my job.

This isn’t to say that I didn’t make mistakes along the way, because I did.  There’s a great story about one of the students I tutored giving me his post-game Gatorade because I ran into him after I had personally drank a gallon of alcohol.  All this means is that I shouldn’t have tried so hard to fit into this definition of what it means to be an “adult.”  I don’t know what an adult is, honestly.  But if it means having a home-loan and babies and husbands at the young age of 24 then I never want to grow up.  I barely know who I am.  I eat candy for breakfast sometimes.  I stay up until 3 A.M. for no reason.  These are not things that adults do but they are things that I am supposed to be doing.  I work a crappy job for crappy pay and have not yet reached my goal of becoming a Men’s College Basketball coach and that is entirely okay.  If being married and having kids is what you want to be doing at 24, then do it.  If it’s not, just remember Chandler and Monica were in their 30s before they got married and half of marriages end in divorce.

Sara is a currently working a crappy job for crappy pay in Virginia. Some of my fondest memories are hanging out with her during our college years. When she does decide to become an adult the world better watch out cause she is going to take it by storm.

Managing Expectations

Managing expectations is something that I have become intimately acquainted with. While I am definitely sure that I was better off than many other college students I was irritated when I did not get a full-time job until almost a year after I left college. I mean, I was a catch! I was intelligent, savvy, and willing learn. I mean, what were people waiting for!?!

After leaving college, I couldn’t wait to start working. Getting up, getting dress, commuting, doing a full days work, and coming home. It all sounded so…grown up. And that’s what I wanted to be, a grown up. I have since rethought that but that’s another post for another time. When I first stated job searching I did not hear back at all. So my high self-esteem dipped a bit but I was determined so I kept trying. Then I started getting some interviews and with them my self-esteem rose a little higher. However, that was short-lived because no one was calling me back after the interviews . A phone interview followed by an in person interview, and then….silence. I mean most of them didn’t even have the courtesy to email me. Just radio silence. For awhile I thought it might be me, then after a long time I was convinced it was me. I took a break from job apply to have my surgery (I know you have no idea what I am talking about. Don’t worry I will get to it soon.) Then I finally did it….well sort of did it. I got a full-time job with a great organization called The Atlas Project as a research fellow. While it wasn’t a full-time staff job it was a job. It was around this time that I started to realize that I was not going to get a call from every job I applied to, no matter how perfect I thought I was for it. So I started to not get excited about anything. I would go to a job interview, think I did a great job ( I have become a zen master in the art of the interview), and left thinking “I so got this job.” Some went so well I would half expecting them, to call me an hour later and tell me how perfect I was. Rejection after rejection has changed my attitude toward the whole process. I now apply to jobs and almost immediately forget about them because 8/10 applications will get no response. OK maybe that’s a little high but you get my point. I have convinced myself that the perfect job does not exist. That I will get stuck doing something I can tolerate instead of something I actually like. Forget about loving my job, cause that ain’t never gonna happen.

Then it happened. My negative attitude toward job hunting took a turn yesterday after I had a job interview that may have actually landed me that illusive perfect job. I mean, could it really happen? Could I really finally have not only landed a full staff job but the perfect job as well? I told a few people but then I started second guessing myself. I mean, maybe it was all in my head and that would suck cause it really is exactly what I want to do. I could use my degree and learn about campaign finance and fundraising. It would be perfect but experience has shown my that when I think that it could happen it usually doesn’t. I have been told many times to put positive energy out and positive energy will come back to you but that is infinitely hard than it sounds. Life has a way of beating the optimism out of you.  So to limit the hurt that I get when a rejection comes in I have learned to…manage expectations.

College 201

OK college is an amazing place. Everything from the classes to the professors to the sports to the extracurricular activities is something everyone should experience.

You might be wondering, why did she call the post about College 201. Most introductory classes end in 101 or 102.  Well come this fall I will be a junior in college. That’s right finally breaking into that upperclassmen status. This means that I am done with introduction classes and have finally picked a major. I actually declared a major during my sophomore year as a business administration major. Bad idea. So I (as of about 10:30 this morning) have become a political science major.

So with that background I can finally answer your question fully. While political science is a new major for me it is not my first major. I have already taken the 101 class when it comes to majors and I have moved on to another. I am starting a new chapter and am not in the introductory phase of my college career. I know what is expected of me and what I need to do to achieve at the highest level. I intend to go back to school with a new major, new roommate and a new attitude.

Social Media is Taking Over!!!

 

 So I am sitting in my office overlooking the main street in Alexandria and something came to me…I spend WAYYY too much time with my social media apps. I mean come on, between twitter, Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, blogging (that’s new! lol), texting and emailing I am always swamped with news, gossip, and social commentary. I just cannot get away from it!!! Ahhhh!!!

Ok so now that I have calmed down maybe I can think about this rationally. How many hours away do I spend tweeting? Facebooking? Blogging? Answering emails? Texting? The list goes on and on and I can tell you one thing I am doing those things forever! I mean who really cares that the guy in the grocery store who bags my groceries is cute and way too young for me? Who cares that I nearly hit a cone with my car because I was just having trouble driving that day? Or who wants to know that I am mad at my parents and feel like cussing at them? You know who cares…probably about 4 people. And I can say I know all of them personally, which means I have their numbers in my cell phone. So why do I/we do it when reality says that no one really cares? All the tweeting, facebooking and blogging…because we all like to think that someone out there who we don’t know, some faceless person, is just hanging on our every word. Before I got into twitter (which I still am not huge on) I just thought I was a glorified Facebook status update…and guess what??? It is!! And not only that I can only have 140 characters, which for someone who loves to talked, sucks. But I do it because it is just now something people do.

I was an intern with a local government last summer and I couldn’t sign onto my Facebook during the day as you would probably suspect. At first I thought “oh shit!! How will I plant my seeds in Farmville!??!” (Or at least that’s what I would have said if I played that horrid game. gross) I know I joke but there was seriously this moment of panic about being cut off from all 600 of my closest friends. *pause for laughter/crying* I still had my cell phone so texting was still a go but texting is not Facebook as any 21st century child will tell you. The first week of so I would leave on my lunch break and go find a Starbucks so I could update my status or check my notifications. I would Facebook like a mad woman for an hour and then labor through the next four until 5 o’clock rolled around and I could Facebook again. However after that week and a half something amazing happened…suddenly Facebook wasn’t the be all end all. I could actually go for days without checking it by summer’s end. Amazing isn’t it…you should totally try it sometime.

Social media has us always plugged in. we are always wondering what’s next and it gives us exactly that…next. With our electronic devices and social media sites we are constantly living in the tomorrow instead of the today. Why not try to live in the moment. instead of eating lunch at your cubical try going outside and enjoying the weather or read a couple of chapters in a book you have been dying to read (I have plenty of suggestions if you need any.) actually turn off your cell phone while eating dinner with your friends or significant other, give them your full attention. If you need to start with baby steps try for one hour of your day, just one hour, turning off your blackberry, iTouch, iPad, laptop, cell phone, TV and just be.

—You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land, there is no other life but this.
Henry David Thoreau