What is this thing we're calling quarterlife?

Feb 20, 2008 - 10:03 AM PST

Quarterlife is an interactive experience; you can watch the series or participate in it, post on the site about your job dreams or connect with someone who can make them come true. To continue that theme, I’m going to devote this space to talking about the Quarterlifey issues that you all raise in the comments you post on the MySpace page, the site, in my email inbox (robbinsbooks (AT- avoiding spambots) gmail.com) or on my own Myspace page (www.myspace.com/theoverachieversbook). That is, unless I’m really ticked off about something generational in the news, in which case I’ll probably take advantage of this space to spout off.

One comment that struck me recently was this one, posted by Josh on the Quarterlife MySpace page. He had this to say about the trailer: “It looks cool as a social commentary sort of thing, but still a little immature in concept. I mean, ‘We are geniuses but no one got our transcripts?’ You make your own success, kiddo. It doesn’t just fall into your lap no matter how smart you are.” I thought this was a pretty insightful post, and one that is more accurate than maybe even Josh realized.

First off, this is Dylan’s full quote, which you’ll hear in an upcoming episode: “We were all geniuses in elementary school, but apparently the people who deal with us never got our transcripts, because they don’t seem to be aware of it.”

Here’s where Josh is dead on: When they reach the “real world” (that term is meh, so if any of you have a better one, please let me know), a lot of twentysomethings are surprised to find that “making their own success” is a start-from-scratch process; that no matter where we went to school, or what we accomplished there, or however vast our ambitions were, most of us have to start from the bottom and work our way up. I can’t tell you how many readers/fans/angsters/whomevers have said to me something like, “I didn’t go to college (or XY school) to make someone else coffee” – or make copies, or send FedExes, or do entry-level work, or fill in the blank. So, yes, we have to make our own success. No matter how hard you worked in school, you’re probably not going to be able to coast once you turn your tassles. We all pay our dues. Right on, Josh.

And yet…

Dylan’s quote brings up a larger issue that might fall into both of Josh’s angles: social commentary and immaturity. Why does our generation have such incredibly high expectations for ourselves? Why do so many of us feel like as soon as we leave school, we have to rack up achievements quickly? That we have to be recognized? Why do we feel over-the-hill if we haven’t done something huge by the advanced age of 25? I think it’s attributable to a combination of things. The high-stakes testing education atmosphere. The seemingly plummeting age of celebrities. The sheer necessity of making a lot of money to pay back ridiculously high student loans. Helicopter parents.
Growing up, many twentysomethings were treated as if they were “geniuses in elementary school” or the equivalent. (I don’t think Dylan means that phrase literally; she’s using it to cover everything from higher-level classes to athletic accomplishments to artistic talents, basically anything for which you were patted on the head and told you were special.) The adults in their lives – parents, teachers, coaches – wrapped them up in shiny platitudes like “Be all you can be,” “The world is your oyster,” “You can do anything!” and so on. When kids hear something over and over again, they tend to start believing it. So – work with me here – kids might grow up thinking that once they finish school, an array of very clear, very doable paths (musician! actor! astronaut! married! homeowner!) will appear, stretching from their doorstep out to the horizon, like glimmering yellow brick roads, and all they have to do is choose a direction, and skip.

As a teen and then as an early twentysomething, you might assume you can do anything you want or become anyone you want – and then it’s a day or a month or a year after graduation and reality comes crashing down on you when you suddenly realize That’s not how it is. See, real life is hard. And sometimes it sucks. Those of us who have already pummeled our way through our twenties might be reading those words and thinking “Cry me a river.” But when you haven’t been through your 20s, and nobody – friends, the media, the focus on the latest barely-legal-if-that It Person – talks about them as anything but the glamorous, carefree, young, and beautiful years, it can be disconcerting to discover that isn’t always the case. And then on top of that, you come to the conclusion that either you’re not a genius, or everyone else is just as much a genius as you are, or even if you happen to a genius, the rest of the world, other than Great Aunt Mamie, couldn’t care less. These concepts, which I guess, as Josh suggested, could be called the perspectives of immature people – not in a bad way, just an inexperienced way – aren’t discussed often in the media. Which is one reason quarterlife is such a fresh show.

The quarterlife can be a confusing time of contradictions, in which you’re pulled in various directions. It can be:

a time of creativity because the world is your blank canvas, with infinite possibilities.
a time of paralysis because the world is your blank canvas, with an intimidating number of possibilities.

an age at which you’re expected to make important life decisions.
an age at which you feel like you haven’t lived enough to make important life decisions (kind of like the experience Catch-22: employers say they want someone with “experience,” but in order to get experience you have to get hired in the first place).

a time of wanting it all – or at least some measurable progress in one area of your life.
a time of feeling guilty for being disappointed that you don’t have it all, or even some measurable progress.

a stage that makes you feel like you’re not becoming an adult quickly enough.
a stage that makes you feel like you want to hang on to childhood a little longer.

a decade to go get what you want.
a decade to figure out what the hell it is that you want in the first place.

a chaotic time when your priorities seem scattered.
a suffocating time when it seems like you’re stuck.

a series of questions that form an unfinished checklist.
a series of comparisons that lead you to question yourself.

a navigation of relationships, old and new.
a realization that it’s hard to find new relationships after school.

a roadtrip without a map, freeing, exhilarating, leading you to feel unburdened and obligationless.
a roadtrip without a map, unfamiliar, uncertain, leading you to feel lost and directionless.

the utmost chance to reinvent yourself.
the utmost reminder that you don’t know yourself at all.


Who is Alexandra Robbins?

Quarterlife Advice Columnist Alexandra Robbins
Author of Conquering Your Quarterlife Crisis; The Overachievers; Pledged ; and other books about college and post-college life

Alexandra Robbins is a journalist who has written for several publications, including
Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, The Washington Post, and Forbes, and regularly appears on national television on shows such as The Colbert Report, Oprah, The Today Show, 60 Minutes, Anderson Cooper 360, and The View. Some of her books include Pledged: The Secret Lives of Sororities, and Secrets of the Tomb, about George W. Bush’s secret society Skull and Bones. A consultant on generational issues, she frequently lectures at universities, high schools, corporations, alumni and professional associations, and other organizations about quarterlife issues, and has interviewed thousands of twentysomethings and thirtysomethings on the subject.

Hailed by the press as “an excellent stylist and a first-rate mind” and “a media celebrity,” Robbins has developed a riveting signature style of investigative journalism that reads like a fast-paced work of fiction. The New York Times said Robbins’ latest book, The Overachievers, an Editors’ Choice, “reads like very good ...fiction, thanks to its winning cast, its surprising plot twists and its pushy parents.” People Magazine named The Overachievers its Critics’ Choice, gave it four out of four stars and called it “impossible to put down,” and Entertainment Weekly called it “quick and riveting.”

However, these days, Alexandra seems to be more commonly known as the chick who called Stephen Colbert a d-bag.

For more information, please visit www.alexandrarobbins.com


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