Thursday entry (for 9/10/09): Quarter-life Crisis

We've all heard of the term midlife crisis. It's often joked about in Western society, most frequently when poking fun of men in their sixties who feel the need to purchase an overpriced sports car as a way to reclaim their youth. The term midlife crisis was created in 1965 by Elliott Jaques, a Canadian psychoanalyst and organizational psychologist. This term was created to describe the phase that most middle aged people experience anywhere between their thirties and sixties. The phase includes feelings of depression, anxiety and self doubt over the realization that they are no longer young and that old age is imminent. Several life changing occurrences can trigger these feelings, such as the death of a parent or parents, extramarital affairs, menopause in women or children leaving home. For women this phase can last anywhere between two to five years and in men from three to ten years.

As recent as eight years ago, the term quarter-life crisis made it's debut into the self help section of bookstores everywhere with the release of Quarterlife Crisis, the Unique Challenges of Life in your Twenties by Abby Wilner and Alexandra Robbins. The depression, anxiety and self doubt that is associated with midlife crisis are mirrored in the theory of quarter-life crisis. The main difference is that a quarter-life crisis occurs during your twenties. Usually it's associated with having turned twenty-five. There are slightly different triggers that bring on a quarter-life crisis compared to a midlife crisis and they include confusion of identity, insecurity regarding present accomplishments, frustrated with the working world and not being able to find a stable job or partner, desire to have children and thinking everyone else is more successful in every aspect of life than yourself.

Quote on topic by an expert:

"Plenty of people are going to say the quarterlife crisis doesn’t exist. Let them. My father doesn’t believe in it. But consider that it’s not so long ago that the menopause, the midlife crisis and other life-stage problems were dismissed as self-indulgent. We’re convinced everyone else is having more (and better) sex, doing more (and better) drugs and generally having more fun than we are. And maybe they are. Our parents certainly did. But you aren’t the only twentysomething who hasn’t bought a great house, snared a gorgeous partner, paid off hideous debts and landed a dream job. In reality, few of us have. Most are just as freaked out as you are that your twenties are bigger, scarier and harder than promised. It’s just that nobody really talks about it. Until now."
--Damian Barr

Annotated bibliography:

Robbins, Alexandra and Abby Wilner. Quarterlife Crisis: The Unique Challenges of Life in Your Twenties. New York: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated, 2001.

Alexandra Robbins is an investigative journalist, lecturer and author. The topic of her books have dealt with young adults, education and college life. She graduated from Yale in 1998.

In Quarterlife Crisis: The Unique Challenges of Life in Your Twenties, authors Robbins and Wilner explore the trials and tribulations associated with the transition to adulthood and give those trials and tribulations a name at long last: quarter-life crisis. The book offers advice on how to make the transition smoother and includes personal stories from twentysomethings who have gone through this stage in their lives.

"The whirlwind of new responsibilities, new liberties, and new choices can be entirely overwhelming for someone who has just emerged from the shelter of twenty years of schooling. We don't mean to make graduates sound as if they have been hibernating since they emerged from the womb; certainly it is not as if they have been slumbering throughout adolescence (though some probably tried). They have in a sense, however, been encased in a bit of a cocoon, where someone or something-parents or school, for example-has protected them from a lot of the scariness of their surroundings. As a result, when graduates are let loose into the world, their dreams and desires can be tinged with trepidation. They are hopeful, but at the same time they are also, to put it simply, scared silly."

How this topic relates to my work:

I turned twenty-five this year but honestly I began my descent into a quarter-life crisis when I was twenty-three. This year more than ever I feel the pressure of the future and I try my best not to constantly worry about what I'm going to do in order to put food in my mouth and a roof over my head once I leave VCU. I feel that this paired with my growing disappointment with art school and as a result, discouragment of ever having a career in photography, will make for an interesting backdrop for my project this year.