But what about the similar type of life crisis that most people go threw earlier in life? That time in your 20s, where you suddenly find yourself a bit lost. You are constantly wondering if you are dong the right thing, where you are heading, and asking yourself the 64 million dollar question: what am I going to do with my life? I like to call this your quarter-life crisis.
I am Alexandra and I am currently knee deep in my quarter-life crisis. I graduated in December of 2010, four and a half years after I started college, from Texas State University with a BA in Political Science. I had good grades, but not the kind of great grades that apparently you need to really make it out here. I graduated with a 3.2 GPA. For a long time in college I was a bit undecided and I had no problem telling people that. I didn't feel like I needed to have everything figured out. After time moved on and I realized I had to pick a major I chose PoliSci because it is a subject I both enjoy and understand. I minored in International Relations because I've been fortunate enough to travel a lot and I wanted to go something globally related.
The January after I graduated I was lucky enough to land a job working for the Chief Clerk's Office for the Texas House of Representatives during the 82nd legislative session. This was a very high profile job in which I interfaced with all of the Reps on a daily basis. Our office was where they filled all of their legislation and we kept track of them. Our office was also kind of the unofficial place to go if someone had a question. So needless to say, in my 6 months working there I learned how things worked inside and out. I believed that with that kind of experience I would have no trouble finding another job when the session, and my position came to an end. But alas...that doesn't seem to be the case.
I have been on not only the job hunt but the hunt for a direction to take my life both on a personal and professional level for 4 months now (but really its been years). I have applied many places in Austin for jobs that would keep me in government in some way, shape or form to try to gain more experience but there are very few and I've come to realize I'm competing with a ton of very smart, very qualified people. I quickly realized that having trouble finding a job is not just my problem, this is our whole generations problem. I know so many people in my same position, with a degree and aspirations that are forced to work in retail or food service because they cant find a job or they simply don't know what they want to do yet.
This break I've been unintentionally taking has given my a lot of time to think, and in turn a lot of time to evaluate where I am, what I'm doing and where I want to go. And to be honest, I've discovered that I have no idea. I studied PoliSci because it was easy for me, and I thought that meant I liked it...but do I really? I have been applying for jobs in government because that's where I started...but is that really where I want to be? Its a hopeless feeling, that "I don't know what to do" feeling, and it plagues me daily. I know that there are plenty of people out there who are my age who have a plan and are going in the right direction and to them I say good job, I hope you're right and tell me your secret. But for some reason, I'm finding more and more people my age who are just kind of floating threw, or have actually come to a complete stop because we think one thing is supposed to happen, and it doesn't. I believe that there are many factors that go in to someone, like myself, having a quarter-life crisis and I intend to use this to explore how we, as 20 somethings, got here and how we can move on and stop asking ourselves...What now?
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