Confessions of a 28-Year-Old 22-Year-Old

                Lately, I find myself spending an awful lot of my free time on BuzzFeed. Sure, they love stealing articles, pictures, and ideas from smaller corners of the Internet and putting them in lists that maximize instant gratification, but sometimes simplicity is what you need after a long day of work. More importantly, sometimes the simplest, silliest things can change the way you view your life. Take, for example, the series of articles comparing actions and feelings at various ages (titled something like “____ In Your Early 20’s Versus ___ In Your Late 20’s”). Essentially the point of all of these articles is that your first few years of post-college life are supposed to be full of fun, insecurity, terrible choices, crackling energy, and no solid consequences. As you grow throughout the decade (and throughout the rest of your life), maturity sets in, usually coupled with a slower, less manic vivacious. I think in general, this is a pretty standard view of one's 20's.The truth I referred to earlier isn’t that I fit this profile at all. In fact, it’s the opposite: I think I might be a 28-year-old 22-year-old.

                Of course, life truths should rarely be derived from silly websites whose journalistic highlights include constantly reusing pictures from the nineties of a clear inflatable couch/Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears in matching denim outfits/Beans from "Even Stevens" having grown up and looking like a member of the Manson Family. However, equally as important as the silly articles themselves are the comments. A lot of those comments are right in line with my own life, which leads me to my big point: Is Gen Y growing up too fast for our own damn good? Or is our younger push into adulthood actually a way that we might set the world upright again?

                It should be noted that this is just a theory based on my immediate social experiences. I also recognize that being a graduate of a top school might be self-selecting for more responsible and thoughtful young people. But honestly…I doubt it. I know a few Yalies who are living in an extended senior year state of  suspension. They live in a colorful Instagram world of pricy bars and rooftop parties, and they give me a lot of shit for the life I’m enjoying far away from the noise. They flake on plans for fabulous spur-of-the-moment adventures, and I have work at 7:30 AM tomorrow and I really want to get some sleep. They are the target audience for the Buzzfeed-Under-25 crowd. They are the HBO “Girls” crowd. And I have almost nothing in common with them.

                Their college-after-college world looks absolutely exhausting. I love my adult life. I love not constantly wondering if I’m saying something stupid in front of a group of people I feel like I should be trying to impress. I love not constantly buying new clothes that I can’t afford because I go out three nights a week. I love having a partner with whom I can sit down and talk about plans, dreams, and fears. That partner is also the best roommate I’ve ever had, with no backstabbing, passive-aggression, or filthy common spaces to fight about. I love that my life is entirely my own, and that other than work, I don’t do anything I either don’t want to, unless that thing is essential for my well-being and future happiness (like going to the gym/talking about my finances). Without that manufactured need to please/fill my schedule/be somebody constantly pressuring me to do things I hate, I have a lot of fun. I love being proud of my accomplishments, and feeling like I’m a solid contributor to the world. I’m not saying that I didn’t have an awesome time in college, but I live in the real world now, and this real world waits for no woman.

                I know I’m not the only one my age who feels this way, and I think a big part of it is the world in which a lot Millennials grew up. A world of divorced parents, Gen X career moms, and political gridlock. A world that showed us we could screw up big time and get no sympathy, but also that there’s nothing stopping us from being heard if we speak up. A world that we know won’t support us when we retire, and can’t guarantee us jobs when we graduate, but also lets us make a living writing silly lists about the 90's for a website. A world where a man can become a billionaire without a college degree, while many low-level business chains won’t even consider hiring you without one. Our world of limitless potential has two poles, and the positive is balanced by the negative possibility that we can fail equally as much as we can succeed. People call us the “Gold Star” generation because we crave instant gratification and reward, but that comes with the equal potential of instant failure and humiliation. Take a look at the Internet. We grew up with the ability to learn about any obscure sexual position in seconds, to have our performances “go viral”, and to experience instant worldwide celebrity for doing absolutely nothing useful (see: Ridiculously Photogenic Guy). That same tool can destroy us in a spectacular fashion in a matter of days (see: Mitt Romney’s 47% speech, the victim of the Stubenville rape, and the unfortunate student who got mistakenly pegged as the Boston Marathon Bomber on Reddit and ended up dead). I think this world has made us lose our innocence much faster than any generation before us, and that forces us down one of two paths: either we live in the aforementioned state of suspension-languishing in an unpaid internship, feeling like adulthood is out of reach, and still having our parents pay our phone bill-or we grow up right now and make it work. I’m not saying there are no exceptions. There are people who will fall through the cracks, or won’t ever have to grow up because their fortunes are limitless, or will forever stay stagnant because they just don’t care, but I think most of us are growing up when we can, and living in a youthful stasis only when the world rejects our attempts to grow. We aren't whiny and useless, we just know the stakes are huge, and that's paralyzing. 

In short, “Girls” is full of shit.

                I recently sat down with my company’s financial advisor to talk about my 401(k). Having been an Anthro major whose last math experience was a terribly advised Statistics class, I was pretty impressed with how much I understood and how interested I was in my financial future. According to the advisor, this is actually pretty common for my generation: we are better informed, more interested, and more proactive in the way we handle investing in our futures. Personally, I think this is because you and I both know we’re not getting any Social Security, and pensions are like unicorns for anyone younger than the Baby Boomer generation, but ultimately I think it’s a really great thing.

I think it’s great that we’re not getting married and having children just because we’re supposed to. I think it’s great that we’re disenchanted with getting our news from a single source because we know how biased the real world is. I think it’s great that we watch the smartest television shows in history and that Comic-Con gets bigger every year. I love that we embrace our differences and diversity more than any other generation currently living. And I think that our loss of innocence from the rough world we live in brought us to this point, because we know, better than anyone, that we can't be college kids forever. We have massive student loans, so why go to a bar with $20 cocktails? We have aging grandparents struggling to stay afloat, so how can we justify not thinking about our own future plans? Obesity is an epidemic, so how can we afford not to care about healthy living and sustainable agriculture? And the age-old, constant question every generation asks their elders: Who are you to tell me that I’m doing it wrong, just because I’m doing something new? Mankind’s youthful innocence and idealization of the status quo has often been a crutch that we’ve used historically to justify judgment, ignorance, and greed, and it’s costing our older generations. It's time for someone to take some responsibility before it's too late. Maybe holding onto that particular idea of youth feels like the right thing to do for those of us who can’t make the leap into adulthood right now, despite their best efforts. But for the rest of us? I think we’re getting it together at a record pace. I’m a 28-year-old 22-year-old. And I like it that way.