Reflections on Turning 26, or, What It's ACTUALLY Like Being a New Adult

On today, the day of my birth, I thought I would commemorate this momentous occasion, with a reflection on the years that came before. As I leave my early 20s and embark on the upper ones, officially (?) leaving new adulthood behind, I want to talk a bit about that experience and how it compares to fiction. This post will be a good deal more personal than my usual ones. Also, I do ask that any family members who might be reading this post (Mom, Dad, Grandma, I'm looking at you), please stop reading now or have the grace never to discuss these things with me unless I choose to bring them up.
 

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In the past, I've complained pretty vociferously about the paltry smattering of offerings in New Adult fiction, and about how I still can't get behind it as a concept. Partly, I just hate the name and don't think a new genre classification is requisite. However, I also feel like New Adult, in theory, could fill a gap in fictional offerings, should it ever actually choose to be about the process of transitioning from dependence to independence, rather than solely about sexy sex times.

My new adult experience is perhaps somewhat atypical, but, still, I think is one that many people will go through, and one I've not seen reflected frequently in fiction. About the only books that have really reminded me of the feelings of that transition are Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl and Gayle Forman's Just One Day. All the others, whether I liked them or not, were solely about sexy romance.

College, or, The First Step
Due not to skipping a grade but to the technicalities of cut offs for when students can begin public school, I graduated from high school at 17, and entered college shortly before my 18th birthday. Living out of my parents' roof for the first time, I had begun a new phase of life, one where I could be much more independent. Though still in all ways financially dependent, my parents could no longer control my day to day life. They had no say in who I saw or what I did. I could drink (though I didn't drink any alcohol at college freshman year), stay up late (you bet I did), and have all the sex I wanted (or, you know, not), and they would be none the wiser. Freedom, glorious freedom.

I'm a bit of a strange duck (quack!), prone to daydreaming over action. The assumption one might draw about an innocent, sheltered only child heading off to college, the one predicted to me by an RA who was harmless but a bit of an asshole, is that I would go off the rails, drinking and making lots of unwise sexual decisions. To be honest, I probably would have done a bit more partying that first year had it not been for that pronouncement, which stubbornly made me decide not to drink at all, not that I would have ever been the girl puking in the bushes outside, just to put him in his place, not that he probably remembered the incident at all. In fact, I'm the girl who lives in her head, and thinks about these options being open to me, but hesitates.

College was amazing in most every way. I made wonderful friends, finally finding people who got me and appreciated me for everything that I am (smart, bitchy, sarcastic, prickly, fangirly, nerdy), rather than liking me in SPITE of those things. In college, I learned a lot about who I am as a person and started to slough off the insecurities that had buried me since elementary school. Sure, I learned facts, but I think the most valuable lessons I got in college were about the way that I relate to myself, and realizing that it's alright for me to be who I am and that I do not have to try to reform in someone else's image. What the freedom and the fresh start really did was give me a chance to find myself free from the expectations of anyone who knew me before.

Unlike what I see in most New Adult books I see in college, I didn't find myself through a guy. There was no epic romance in my college years, a fact which seriously stressed me out, since both my parents, my roommate's parents and one set of grandparents had found each other in college, and I SO thought that was in the cards for me. A relationship didn't help rebuild me, or at least not a romantic one. Making true friends who didn't want to put me in a box or demand anything of me except that I be me did help.

Friends helped me see the good within myself that I had been blind to, but that knowledge still had to come from me. To this day, I have trouble taking or believing compliments. When it comes down to it, only MY opinion of myself matters.

Congratulations! You Have Degree(s)!, or, Now What the Hell do I do?
Oh my Zeus, but the end of college is freaking TERRIFYING. I've taken a whole bunch of classes, received a fancy piece of paper, and now have a degree in history (in my case). Well, what the fuck do I now? Seriously, in what way is history a marketable skill? Why did I take these classes? Are there any jobs that won't feel like someone's digging my eyeballs out with a melon baller every day in some sort of Promethean eternal torture?

What I personally did is going for stalling tactics: grad school. I decided my calling was librarianship, largely because of my passion for books and reading, and also because a lot of my soul sisters were going this route too. Sounded better than anything else at any rate. One more year of school and seven more wonderfully dear friends later, and I have another costly piece of paper. Unless you're one of those lucky people with BAMF skillz who gets headhunted right out of college, this is probably how you will feel at the end of it:

Job Hunting, or, How to Lose All of Your Self-Esteem and Drive Your Parents Up the Wall
At this point, my parents have spent an absurd amount of money on my education, and now I can't find a goddamn job. Now, this may not be the case with every profession, but library jobs are thin on the ground, and really difficult to get if you don't have years of experience, which you can't get if no one will hire you because you don't have enough experience. It's a big ha-ha of a catch-22.

I sent out hundreds of applications and lived in my childhood bedroom, days spent on my parents' couch. Not exactly the glamorous adulthood I'd pictured. But, hey, at least I didn't have debts and my parents LET me move back in. Perhaps what sucks about job hunting most, at least in the library world, is that you will NEVER hear back about the status of your application in 99% of cases, and the hiring process generally takes months from the time the application is actually due. Sloths could hire new librarians more quickly.

During this period of boredom and renewed self-loathing, I did finally start up that blog I'd been planning. And, now, it's finally on my blog in a real way. Wooo, full circle. I only wish that I'd known about Twitter and the community earlier (I didn't really find out about it until I'd been blogging for a year and a half), because I was really lonely at this point. Downside of starting fresh at an out of state school is that if you move back to your hometown, you don't have a network of friends.

Eventually, I found a job outside of librarianship, working for a small software company, which at least uses my information organization and writing skills. It's fine, but totally not where I ever expected to end up. That's life. Of course, I also didn't expect to end up back in Atlanta, so close to my parents, so who knows. Prepare for life to throw you curveballs, as much as that is something for which one can prepare.

Adultiness, or, I Guess I'm a Grown Up Now
My last few years of being a new adult were the setting out on my own thing. I moved out of my parents house as quickly as I can, convinced by my father that buying a townhouse was the right move. I'm still on the fence about home ownership, frankly, but I like having my own space. I have insurance on my body and my house, a mortgage, an American Express Card, disposable income, and a cat. When shit goes down, I have to take care of it, and it's pretty terrifying.

What I want to see in so-called New Adult fiction is just that: the confusion and struggle of finding oneself and learning how to deal with responsibilities you're rather underprepared for, and making it out the other side. As a teen, I read tons of books about people in a new adult age range (18-25), and, like now, they were almost all romances. From that, I imagined that by 25, I would have my life fully sorted and perfected, but that's such a laugh.

Today I'm 26, and, honestly, I'm still not entirely sure what I'm doing and I sure as hell do not feel like a "grown up." Though sex and romance are no doubt a huge aspect of most new adults' lives, even if they're not mine, that's still only one experience among a myriad. Real life isn't just about romance, and I want more fiction that reflects these sorts of experiences honestly.

 

What would you like to see in New Adult books, fellow people who are in that phase of life or past it, that you've not been seeing? For those who are younger, do you think fiction has given you unrealistic expectations?