Adulting Without a Manual

Adulting is hard. Yes, we’ve all heard that phrase before – and quite frankly, we have overused it– but adulting is, in fact, incredibly difficult. Think about it: we are unwillingly enrolled in a 13-year simulation called “school,” and once it ends, we are suddenly thrust into adulthood. The vast majority of us enter adulthood feeling unprepared, uneducated, underinformed, and unprotected. And yes, I use the word “unprotected” not to sound overly dramatic, but because it is uncomfortably accurate.

For those of us in our early twenties, the only life we’ve known is the one in which we wake up, attend school for more than six hours a day, come home, and do it all over again the next day. That’s it. That’s the mundane routine that we become robotically accustomed to. At the time, though, that lifestyle was actually pretty great.

Very little was expected of us. We weren’t expected to provide for ourselves, own property, be productive every single day, plan for the future, understand how to do taxes, hold down a job, or even make our parents overwhelmingly proud. In fact, the bar was set pretty low for us. As long as we passed our classes and completed our homework assignments, our parents couldn’t ask for much more.

Hell, we didn’t even have to show up half the time. Skipping school was as easy as faking a stomachache and staying home for the next two days. There was no threat of being fired from your job. No fear of losing a paycheck. No worrying about how to make next month’s rent– even though, after working your regular nine-to-five, you might not be able to afford it.

So, where did things go wrong? Why does it seem like every modern-day twenty-something-year-old is struggling to get their life together? Why can’t any of us seem to get ‘it’ whatever ‘it’even is. It’s almost like we are expected to fail– or, in some way, set up to fail.

Growing up, we were promised that once we graduate high school and attend college, we would land a well paying job, buy a house, and live the American Dream. However, none of us really know how to do any of that. How do we get a well-paying, full-time job? How do we save enough money to afford a house? How do we actually buy one? And most importantly, why don't we have the answers to any of these questions?

Why didn’t anyone prepare us for the harsh reality that, once we are no longer students, we are no longer entitled to the soft cushion of protection that we have inevitably relied on for most of our lives?

By the time some of us find the answers to these questions, our twenties may very well be coming to an end, and by then, what will we have accomplished? Will we have adjusted to the harshness of society, or will we have fallen victim to it? Will we have finally accepted the phrase that society once considered an exaggeration as a societal norm, or will we have escaped the cycle?