So I’m in my mid-20s, and I’m dealing with a lot of QUESTIONS.
I’m sure many of you can also relate to this. This is the first time in my life that I am challenging beliefs I’ve held for DECADES. Beliefs that I’ve subconsciously adopted from family and the sociocultural context that I was born into. These rigid beliefs have helped me navigate a turbulent adolescence, one in which I had two feet in two different cultural frameworks, constantly competing for the foreground in my system of values.
It’s mentally exhausting to do this kind of mental excavation. It had always been easier to go along with the Capital-P “Plan” my parents had set out for me than to figure out what I wanted for myself—especially when deep down, I always knew that what I wanted was not in line with what they wanted for me. The Plan was for me to graduate with an English BA, immediately go to law school, start as a junior associate in a corporate firm, and then once I was a few months settled into my career, start the search for a husband.
Strangely enough, my parents have never expressly pressured me into their Plan. Somehow, I just internalized that pressure myself over the years. I think I was always driven by guilt.
I am blessed with kind, attentive, and generous parents who take an active interest in my development and growth. Full transparency, my entire education, including college, was funded through my parents and through scholarships. My parents are immigrants with a classic rags-to-riches story and they’ve dedicated their hard-earned wealth to making sure that my younger brother and I are set up for fulfilling, successful futures. I know I have it way easier than they ever did. I have never wanted to take their love and their resources for granted.
Which is why I felt an immense amount of guilt when I decided 3 months out from graduation that I didn’t want to go to law school after all.
I was aggressively pursuing legal internships throughout my college career. I tried a little bit of everything, from corporate to public defense. I did find my public defense internship incredibly fulfilling, but realized it was too stressful of a career path for me to handle. I was disheartened to realize that I did not enjoy the day-to-day of any of my other internships. I wanted so badly to make it work. And I think I could have—but then I probably would’ve had a midlife crisis decades down the line.
Meanwhile, I loved getting my English degree. Choosing my English major and Philosophy, Creative Writing, and Liberal Arts minors was one of the only big decisions I’d made in my life that had truly felt like it came from me. Because there aren’t any prerequisite majors required for law school and I had lots of AP credits coming in from high school, I was able to take courses that I truly enjoyed in college.
So I graduated with an English BA and no more Plan.
But as stressful as this new chapter has been, it has also been incredibly freeing.
I’ve stumbled into a copywriting job which I have grown to love. I love the work I do and the people I work with and am so grateful. I have also steadily built a music career on the side, which was always my dream growing up. The big downside right now is that I have no longterm career plans and don’t really know what comes next.
My parents have been patient and gracious as I’ve tried to figure things out on my own. I think they are concerned because I have no longterm plan anymore, but I think it’s important that I take this time as a young, single, independent adult to figure out who I am outside of everyone else’s expectations.
It’s challenging for sure. I have developed a robust internal validation system over the years, built on the voices of my parents, grandparents, American, Indian, and pop culture. It’s hard to tell when ideas come from me or are just reflections of this system, designed to keep everyone else happy. I find myself frequently asking myself “Does this idea light me up? Or does the fact that this idea will make my parents happy light me up?”
Unfortunately , I don’t think I can out-reason myself. The only way to figure out what I truly want is to throw things at the wall and see what sticks. For example, I’ve been vegetarian my whole life out of cultural expectation and habit, but I am now considering testing out a pescatarian diet. I’ve never really dated before (I know, I’m behind the curve) and am going to download apps and see what happens. I don’t know what I’m doing with my career, but I can get clearer on what kind of work fulfills me, why I enjoy my current role so much, and see how to expand from there. I might even get bangs even though I was always told my forehead is too small for them!
On the outside, it’ll probably look like I’m going a little crazy. And maybe I am, who knows.
I recently told my therapist that I feel like I’m having a quarter-life crisis, but he reframed my situation into a quarter-life awakening, which is infinitely more empowering and helpful. I feel like a newborn. I am exploring the world with a brand-new framework and taking life into my own hands.
So to my fellow 20-somethings, I hope you are faring well through your quarter-life awakenings. I’m excited to see how we transform over the years. Let me know in the comments if you have any tips that have helped you navigate this complicated time!
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