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At 27, I've worked over 10 jobs since 18. I've been a janitor, wrenched rods in the oil field, ranch-handed horses, worked construction, tutored students, edited news publications, and many other things to make money. I did most of these things while going to school, not to make ends meet but to HELP lighten the requirement of money I borrowed from my parents, whom I'm lucky to have willing and able to lend me that money. At 21, I was pursuing a bachelors of science, and working two jobs. I was NOT paying my own way. I'm now a VP at a startup working for a livable salary and commission. I pay my bills on my own (and have since shortly after graduating), and am paying my family for the money I borrowed. I have strong alternative job prospects in different roles in multiple industries, and have real experience in a variety of professional settings. Could I have cut all my expenditures above what I was making at 21, enrolled in a different school, and paid my own way entirely? absolutely. Would I be more or less successful immediately upon doing so? What about now? Hard to answer either, but I am not worried in assuming I would be less successful in both time-frames. You have a very narrow definition of success in your comment. You are welcome to your opinion, but that particular one will probably be misleading in understanding others. I think you've done very well for yourself if you are self-sufficient at 21, but to define this as success seems quite dismissive to me. As said in another comment, this is labeling all but a select few university students as failures which, as it seems to me, is a plainly bad assumption. I like to think this is a fair assumption at 30 years old, though. I would imagine it is a source of shame if a person is not paying their own expenses at this age; it certainly would be for me. This term 'emerging adults' is describing those people going from adolescents at 17 to self-sufficient adults at 29+. I think 'emerging adult' is a quite good description of a human growth stage. Having lived through that time period more completely than you, I know how much growing I've done since 21 both in my ability and acceptance of responsibility to sustain myself and in my understanding of others. I am also much more willing to accept happenstance as a contributing factor for my successes and others' failures, which is something I can suggest to you. To old gray-hairs in the oil patch, management in tech companies, among VC lenders, or any other 50+year old 'successes', both you and I are still 'kids'. This is true regardless of whether we're paying our own way or not. That, to me, is a good working meaning of 'emerging adult'. The basic notion is that people still have some 'growing up' to do at 21 or even 25, which I agree with. |
The shift isn't in expectations of university students, but in expectations of new graduates. That's what this article seems to be focusing on, and the group which is generally lampooned more broadly (graduates who are still living at home).
The term "emerging adult" does a lot of damage. Like you, I have a great role at a startup. But if our entire generation is lumped into a category of "emerging adults" who can barely hold down a job, our opportunities for advancement and appreciation are severely limited. People's experiences in their 20s are just too divergent (some people are still working temp gigs, while you're a VP) for any useful generations and labels like "emerging adults" only serve to discourage/diminish young achievement.
Suddenly we have to be 30 to considered an adult, even if we're entirely self-sufficient?