“No one likes you when you’re 23,” says Blink-182, but in an age when millennials are moving home in droves, there has never been a truer statement uttered. College is one of the most liberating experiences that someone has to pay for. During a time that allows you to take a Game of Thrones strategy course on a Wednesday and then have tequila and tacos on Thursday, there are not a lot of expectations placed upon college students. The majority of people that I knew in college had their parents helping them in some way or another whether it was with rent, books, bills, or even just taking their kids to Olive Garden once or twice a month. All these little pick-me-ups aid students in feeling like they are still under their parents’ wing. This small security blanket can lead to a lot of disasters when it comes to graduate, find a job, and start paying your credit card debt off.
After you graduate college, there are many responsibilities and expectations to uphold, as well as the frustration that is trying to maintain adult friendships with those whose schedules you can never seem to match up with. I have had the same friends for ten years and it has never been so difficult to get together and hang out. Two of us are substitute teachers, one of us works in a physical therapy office, and two others live two hours away. Twenty-three is the age when you are expected to work a job, have friends, spend time with your family, have a boyfriend and begin your life together, as well as consider what sort of future you should imagine for yourself all the while paying bills, buying things for yourself, and attempting to better your situation (car, clothes, apartment, shoes). It is like a never-ending cycle of work, paying for things, trying to save money, and trying to figure yourself out.
During college, there is a great exploration of self in the form of adventures, studying topics never thought to be interesting, and figuring out which type of liquor makes you throw up the least (still mad at you whisky). Your twenties begin the time when you should be ready to settle down and begin to explore less. Spending a hundred dollars to see a concert becomes a rarity when you get out of college and realise that you will have to request a day off, figure out travel, and is seeing the Lumineers really that necessary to your survival? And there are barely any chances to just go and study abroad (if you are still in college and reading this: GO ABROAD NOW). These things cost money. Lots of money.
The hardest decisions that you will have to make will happen in your early twenties. The give and take between what you want to do, what you need to do, and what you should do: the most annoying seesaw, especially if you moved home after college. Do you go out on a Friday night or take the easy way out and stay curled up in your Christmas pajamas watching whatever crappy Hallmark movie is on? Between doing what you want to do and what your parents want you to do can bring about the most difficult rock and a hard place that you’ve ever been in.
Why can't relatives just realize that it's so awkward to ask how your life is at this time as well? Being single at the holiday feast tables can be like entering the lion's den, and when your family members have facebook and can see all your friends getting falling in love, getting engaged, and having babies there is no denying that you've just spent all your time watching The 100 on Netflix.
Blink-182 had it all wrong. People like you when you're 23, but you won't like 23 in the least bit.
