Isn’t it kind of crazy how that in a matter of few months, we go from raising our hand in order to use the bathroom to filling out FASFAs and deciding what the rest of our lives are going to be like?
Teenagers spend most of their high school lives studying to pass standardized tests and worrying about what college they are going to. Then they finally enter the adult world and the only amount of information they have about the “real world,” is how hard every adult says it is going to be for our generation; however, even we don’t know how difficult it is because the adult world has changed a lot since their time.
According to Pew, “In 2014, for the first time in more than 130 years, adults ages to 18 to 34 were slightly more likely to be living in their parents’ home than they were to be living with a spouse or partner in their own household.”
For the first time in modern America, young adults are not financially stable enough to live on their own, so after they graduate college, they have to return to living with their parents.
In the 1880s, most young adults were living with their spouses; that form of living stopped around the 1960s and now they are not financially stable enough.
At 19 years old, the most mature experience that I have had is calling and setting up my own dentist appointment for the first time over the summer. While doing that was probably the most stressful thing I have been through, besides taking the SATs, it also did not make me anymore prepared to be an adult. After making this appointment, which took a matter of five minutes, I was extremely overwhelmed. This small task sent me into mental exhaustion.
According to Inc. Magazine, “When college students were asked what was the source of their stress, they responded that it stretched far beyond academics, so it is likely that young people entering the work force or the military may also maybe lacking the mental strength they need to successfully join the adult world.”
Coming into college, I was prepared academically but I had no idea the amount of extracurricular stress that comes with being an adult or just a functioning human being.
Being an adult does not mean just working. You have to have friends, do volunteer work and maintain a social life. Balancing all that is supposed to make you less stressed because too much of one thing is bad but what about too much of everything?
According to Inc. Magazine, “ Parents, teachers and coaches dedicate their days to preparing kids for the challenges of life after high school but they miss the mark emotionally.”
Being an adult in this day and age is simply a lot to handle and mentally, this generation is not prepared for it. Our parents, the generation before us, could not prepare us for the adult world because they themselves were only taught how to work. So where does this leave our generation ? Are we just going to remain mentally inadequate forever?
While that may be an option in the future, it is not the only it is not the only one.
“Adulting” is hard and, let’s face it, we are all a little lost on what it means to really be an adult.
So then why not support each other? One of us may know something the other does not.
I may know how file may taxes and you may know how to cope after a mental breakdown, so let’s team up.
