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So that's a huge jump from Concentration Camp behavior to tagging your instagram photos with "YOLO". Just thinking out loud, but I wonder how much of this is d

So that's a huge jump from Concentration Camp behavior to tagging your instagram photos with "YOLO". Just thinking out loud, but I wonder how much of this is due to an entire generation basically reaching the end of the escalator and not being sure what to do after that. In my personal experience, my peers tend to have had their entire lives set up for them. Starting at 3 years old, kids are placed into the appropriate school (preschool through college). Everything is formulaic: join a club or two in high school, pick a college, etc. I feel like the majority of my peers have yet to have made a real decision when they graduate college at ~22. Now suddenly they're "grown ups". It's time to get a job and be independent. But their entire lives have really been set up for them: all they've had to do is to execute the given plan. And all of a sudden they have to find meaning rather than just live up to some challenge placed on them by parents / teachers / what-have-you. It's a tough transition, I imagine! The ride's over, now where do you go? Note: I use the third person because I feel that I've been fortunate enough to have been rather independent and made my own decisions for quite some time. Maybe everyone feels that way?

AJ007 13y ago
Miraculously I decided nearly a decade ago that it was more risky to graduate college and get full time employment than to drop out and do my own thing. Each generation has its own share of problems, some more extreme than others. What we are dealing with now is quite mundane compared to those who were in their 20s when the Vietnam draft started. Or, being Jewish when Hitler seized power. Its still good to understand stupid behavior -- mostly explained by lack of forward thinking.
lmm 13y ago
> Note: I use the third person because I feel that I've been fortunate enough to have been rather independent and made my own decisions for quite some time. Maybe everyone feels that way? Not everyone. I'm happily employed but I still don't feel like I'm "grown up" and really up to making my own decisions (though buying (mortgage) a flat felt like it made me grow up, if only because I'm now responsible for this very expensive thing). I think there's a kind of impostor syndrome going on; adult life feels like it should require more skills than I have.
- Ygg2 13y ago
  I like definition of grown up from Cracked. You haven't grown up until you are responsible for another's human life. Note: You don't need to be married with children to grow up. Kids that take care of their mother are just as grown up.
  - tekalon 13y ago
    While I raised my younger siblings and was often referred to as more 'grown up' than my peers, I still have that 'imposter' feeling described above. Married, good job, have adult worries about kids, house, job. But my husband and I still watch old cartoons and half jokingly talk about what we want to do when we grow up.
  - cafard 13y ago
    In the obituaries of the baseball manager Earl Weaver this year, he was quoted as saying much the same; curiously, he dated it from his divorce.
eli_gottlieb 13y ago
This is certainly a major change, compared to the past, in which there was no free decision to make whatsoever, and adulthood too consisted of tweaking the parameters within a prearranged formula of a life.

AJ007 13y ago

Miraculously I decided nearly a decade ago that it was more risky to graduate college and get full time employment than to drop out and do my own thing. Each generation has its own share of problems, some more extreme than others. What we are dealing with now is quite mundane compared to those who were in their 20s when the Vietnam draft started. Or, being Jewish when Hitler seized power. Its still good to understand stupid behavior -- mostly explained by lack of forward thinking.

lmm 13y ago

> Note: I use the third person because I feel that I've been fortunate enough to have been rather independent and made my own decisions for quite some time. Maybe everyone feels that way? Not everyone. I'm happily employed but I still don't feel like I'm "grown up" and really up to making my own decisions (though buying (mortgage) a flat felt like it made me grow up, if only because I'm now responsible for this very expensive thing). I think there's a kind of impostor syndrome going on; adult life feels like it should require more skills than I have.

Ygg2 13y ago
I like definition of grown up from Cracked. You haven't grown up until you are responsible for another's human life. Note: You don't need to be married with children to grow up. Kids that take care of their mother are just as grown up.
- tekalon 13y ago
  While I raised my younger siblings and was often referred to as more 'grown up' than my peers, I still have that 'imposter' feeling described above. Married, good job, have adult worries about kids, house, job. But my husband and I still watch old cartoons and half jokingly talk about what we want to do when we grow up.
- cafard 13y ago
  In the obituaries of the baseball manager Earl Weaver this year, he was quoted as saying much the same; curiously, he dated it from his divorce.

eli_gottlieb 13y ago

This is certainly a major change, compared to the past, in which there was no free decision to make whatsoever, and adulthood too consisted of tweaking the parameters within a prearranged formula of a life.