The New College Term

Popularized by authors Alexandra Robbins and Abby Wilner, the quarterlife crisis is surfacing as the phenomenon affecting college students

By COURTNEY ROQUE

Meet Joe. Upon turning 50 years old, he dyed his gray hair black, started lifting weights for the first time since college and traded in his car—and his wife—for a newer, sleeker model.

Meet 22-year-old Zack. He just got his bachelor’s degree but isn’t sure what to do next. Although he realizes it is time to move out of his fraternity house, living in his own apartment is more costly and makes him feel isolated. Until he figures out how to hack it in the “real world,” he has decided to park himself on the couch indefinitely and fling Cheetos at the TV.

Joe and Zack are hypothetical characters, but they are examples of what can happen to people who are in major transitional stages of life.

“Oh, Joe? He’s going through a midlife crisis,” neighbors would knowingly whisper.

On the other hand, Zack might be perceived as a lazy whippersnapper or punk kid.

The difference between the two characters is that Joe is experiencing the only age-related crisis commonly acknowledged by the general population.

In recent years, however, the term “quarterlife crisis” has been gaining popularity in modern culture as a term to describe challenges between adolescent angst and the midlife crisis. When twentysomethings have to make a number of decisions regarding jobs, money, living situations, relationships and personal identity.

You won’t find an entry for quarterlife crisis in most dictionaries, but there are resources that recognize it as a new phenomenon.

The Web site www.wordspy.com is devoted to the sleuthing of new words and phrases—terms that have appeared multiple times in newspapers, magazines, books, Web sites and other recorded sources. Word Spy defines quarterlife crisis as: “Feelings of confusion, anxiety and self-doubt experienced by some people in their twenties, especially after completing their education.”

The term quarterlife crisis was made more popular when a book called “Quarterlife Crisis: The Unique Challenges of Life in Your Twenties,” which became a New York Times bestseller, was published in 2001.

Authors Alexandra Robbins and Abby Wilner wrote that the quarterlife crisis can be even more devastating than the midlife crisis, because it is a time when people “relentlessly question their future and how it will follow the events of their past.” And the quarterlife crisis also covers the period of time that includes the “transition from the academic world to the ‘real’ world—an age group that can range from late adolescence to mid-thirties but is most intense in twentysomethings.”

The Real Story
Now, meet Amber Kelley. Unlike Joe and Zack, she is a real person who graduated with a degree in animal science from Fresno State last year, after four years of late-night studying, endless exams and tedious term papers.

“I thought that it was finally going to get easier,” Kelley said. She had been plagued by mounting car payments and student loan bills while in college, and she was looking forward to getting a real job that would help her climb out of debt.

After weeks of searching for a job in her field, she came up empty-handed. Instead, she settled for a position in a job placement firm.

“It was pretty ironic,” Kelley said. “I was answering phones and talking to people who were looking for jobs, while I was still looking for one myself.”

In addition to feeling unsatisfied with work, Kelley also felt as though her social life went through a sudden and drastic change.

“In college, all I had to do was poke my head down the hall to find someone to hang out with or talk to,” Kelley said. “After I left Fresno State, I still talked to old friends once in a while, but it wasn’t the same as having someone nearby all the time.”

So she began to feel isolated and depressed, even though she was newly married.

“My husband didn’t understand at first why I was so unhappy,” Kelley said. “I had to tell him that I needed to have friends in my life besides him and my mom.”

The couple was also struggling financially to pay rent, two car payments and two student loans.

“I started to wonder if it would be worth it to take a job I hated if it meant I could make more money,” Kelley said.

Still feeling something was missing from her life, Kelley searched for a book on the Internet that might help her adjust to her lifestyle changes. She eventually found a Web site where she could purchase Robbins and Wilner’s book. Although she never heard the term before, the quarterlife crisis seemed to describe her situation perfectly.

“I was so relieved that I wasn’t the only one out there who was going through this kind of thing,” Kelley said. The book helped her realize why leaving college had prompted so many new feelings for her.

The Phenomenon
Although extensive psychological research has not yet been done on the quarterlife crisis, Robbins and Wilner proclaim it is a real phenomenon. They wrote that the two types of crises—quarterlife and midlife—stem from the same problem because they are both about a major life change. But they say the results of each couldn’t be more different.

For most people who are going through a midlife crisis, a sense of stagnancy is the catalyst for some kind of change, the authors write. The middle-aged person tends to reflect on the past to see if he or she has lived up to expectations. He or she is also compelled to look forward, sometimes with desperation about the small amount of time he or she may have left.

Conversely, the quarterlife crisis happens because of a lack of stability in one’s life and an uncertainty about what lies ahead. College graduates spend almost 20 years in school, only to be hurled out into a world where a clear path to success is no longer neatly spelled out in a course syllabus. Before, studying led to passing tests that led to good grades. Good grades meant one could get into a good college or graduate school, which was the ultimate goal at the time.

After graduation, many experience a certain amount of culture shock. Addressing issues related to careers, finances, friends and family can’t be resolved by simply taking a test or writing a paper. The number of options available, and decisions to make, lead them to feel lost.

“I was always the type that followed the rules. I sat in the front row of my classes. I never ditched class.

Doing well on a test made me feel a sense of accomplishment and worthiness. It really made sense that having all of this structure taken away at once would make me feel lost,” Kelley said.

The Questions
Graduates aren’t the only ones who feel anxiety after graduation. Even soon-to-be grads begin to feel some of the same life-altering shifts during their last semester of school.

Melissa Medeiros, 23, is completing her last semester in Fresno State’s business program.

“In a way, I’m excited, just because I’m ready to leave Fresno, and I’m ready for another change of environment,” said Medeiros, who is originally from San Ramon.

“But at the same time I don’t want to leave my friends and my comfort zone,” she said. She said this is a difficult time for her because there are so many unknown factors regarding her future.

Matthew Sharps, a professor in the department of psychology, advises students like Medeiros to do some serious thinking and planning about their futures early in their college careers.

“If people head into their college years without really having planned for what’s going to happen next, there can be a pretty big crisis,” Sharps said. “What people want to be doing through their late teens and early twenties is figuring out certain things about how life is going to work.”

He suggests students ask themselves these questions.

• What lifestyle do I prefer?

• Do I want to live in the country or do I want to live in the city?

• How do I actually respond to different kinds of work stress?

Sharps said the answers to these questions can be found in several places, including jobs held in college, internships and formal education.

“One thing I run into all the time is people always ask this question: ‘What do I want to be?’ ” Sharps said. “They don’t ask the question, ‘What do I want to do?’ ”

“A really crucial question is, ‘What is it that I’ll actually be doing in this job at 10:30 in the morning on a Tuesday?’” Sharps said. “If you don’t want to do surgery, you probably don’t want to become a surgeon just because it sounds cool.”

He said people often ask these vital questions too late, after completing several college courses or even after getting their first post-college job.

Kelley said she definitely asked the important questions later than she should have.

“I started on a certain path my freshman year, and I was so focused on graduating in four years that I never stopped to think if my choices still suited me. A lot can happen between 17 and 22,” Kelley said.

Since reading Robbins and Wilner’s book, she said she has re-evaluated her life and where she wants to be in 10 years in terms of her career and family.

The Answers

For those still trying to navigate their way through the tumultuous time that encompasses college graduation, Robbins wrote a follow-up to the first quarterlife crisis book, titled “Conquering Your Quarterlife Crisis: Advice from Twentysomethings Who Have Been There and Survived,” which came out earlier this year.

In the book, she provides answers to the questions posed by the first book and attempts to provide lost and confused twentysomethings “a road map with solutions for how to emerge successful, happy and sane.”

“Even though I wasn’t familiar with the term ‘quarterlife crisis’ when I first heard it,” Kelley said, “I could still relate to all the issues involved with it.

“I think a lot of people my age can.”