People read about challenges of adolescence in textbooks when they are in elementary school. Or they hear about it from parents or others around them. And that helps them wade through this stage of life.
What nobody reads in the books or receives a warning about is the critical stage they will go through during their mid-20s and/or early 30s. This is something everyone has to learn by experience.
When you are in your early 20s, it is all about fun and adventure as well as learning, growing and developing yourself. At this time, you just start your university and embrace a new lifestyle, and, being kind of broke, you also do part--time jobs or tuitions to cover your expenses.
You have a big friend circle, and you love hanging out with them whenever you get the opportunity. You are pretty relaxed; you don’t have to worry about paying utility bills or the price spiral of grocery items. And oh yes, you occasionally go through mild panic attacks when exams commence and often you pull an all-nighter before exams. This is pretty much the life of the early 20s, in general.
"Quarter-life crises don't happen literally a quarter of the way through your life," said lead researcher Dr Oliver Robinson in his research paper, from the University of Greenwich in London. "They occur a quarter of your way through adulthood, in the period between 25 and 35, although they cluster around 30." Although, most researchers believe that it occurs even before the mid-20s.
Being 24 years old means being in a perplexed stage of life. People graduate during this period. Fresh graduates remain clueless about what lies ahead for them. Life takes surprising routes here, i.e. you may get yourself admitted to your dream university for post-graduation or get a dream job.
Your life gets even more confusing and harder after you become 24 years old. You may find your convenient route but walking through that pathway seems harder than finding it. Excessive job searching, attending interviews, or planning your career, struggling with living alone for the first time in your life, navigating through new and serious relationships, making long-term personal or professional decisions, being afraid of major life changes, balancing between passion and work life, or the lack there of are the common stressors of this period. Your big friend circle from university life starts shrinking, you start developing a feeling of being locked up, be it either in a job or in a relationship.
A survey undertaken by gumtree.com reveals that 86 per cent of the 1,100 young people questioned admitted feeling under pressure to succeed in their relationships, finances, and jobs even before hitting 30.
Noshin Tarannum, a 24-year-old final year medical student of Armed Force Medical College, shared her experience of struggles in this particular phase of life.
“Being a medical student, even though my career is determined, I still sometimes find it frustrating to see my friends getting reputed jobs where I am not even done with my graduation yet. Comparison is not a healthy thing, I must say, but we subconsciously do it anyway. The extra pressure for settling down which comes from one’s family makes it even worse.”
Do you remember the essay ‘Aim in Life’ you wrote when you were in the sixth grade? You just wish now if having that aim in life were as easy as writing it. It takes a lifetime for some people to figure out what to do in life in a true sense. But having a goal in life is important — even though that may not be exactly what you may want in the long run but it could be an outline to the least. The confusions that come in the mid-20s are kind of inevitable as millennials are flooded with options. But having an outline at this point is a big salvation.
“I encountered mild and severe depression in various phases of my life, but fortunately it wasn't that bad during my mid-20s compared to the ones I witnessed in other phases,” said Syeda Shahida Maknun, a Bangladeshi master’s student of physical geography at the University of Calgary, Canada.
Maknun always had the dream to pursue higher degrees abroad. She was certain about her choice and that helped her bypass mountains of pressure created by family, peers and society after her graduation.
“For me, life is a journey, and stability is a mindset. If one chooses to think that everything is stable, only then s/he can achieve stability. Otherwise, it is quite the opposite.”
However, this tussle of life gradually comes to ease. With the time, people acquire practical skills to navigate life and they tend to regulate their emotions better. As they age, they learn to adapt different perspectives, believe in themselves more, and slowly things start falling into place. Psychological aging is considered as a positive process in which older equals better.
So twenty-somethings who are lost and super stressed right now should take note that the emotions that sometimes pierce their chests are temporary, the battle they are fighting will not last forever either. This is just another crucial and shaky phase, just like puberty.
KANIZ FATEMA is a fourth year student of geography & environment at the University of Dhaka. Email: [email protected]
