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Is the Quarterlife Generation Ready for Meaning-Making?
The following questions come up again and again during our many off-campus consultancies on the topic of meaning-making:
- Can college students handle the intellectual complexities of meaning-making?
- Are they mature enough?
- Have they had enough life experience?
- Is the concept of meaning of equal interest to all students?
- Does meaning-making require a particular level of emotional and social intelligence?
In response to these questions, we start off this chapter by describing the mindset of the quarterlife generation. We emphasize the big and little meaning questions that the quarterlife generation is asking these days. Following this, we introduce a five-cycle sequence of quarterlife challenges around the issue of choice. Then we introduce one young woman who has wrestled with some of the archetypal quarterlife questions to develop a path of meaning and purpose. We close the chapter with a practical section on how to take advantage of a meaning-making moment in a particular educational setting. (Parts of this chapter appeared in slightly altered form in Nashās article āCrossover Pedagogy,ā appearing in About Campus, 2009, pp. 2-9. Reprinted with permission.)
Quarterlife Challenges
Two of the leading writers on the quarterlife generation (Robbins & Wilner, 2001; Robbins, 2004) believe that this period of life spans the ages from twenty to thirty-five, with significant developmental overlaps for both late teens and pre-midlifers. Thus the quarterlife generation includes most undergraduates as well as most graduate students. Robbins and Wilner think of this period in the adult life narrative as a challenge for the following reasons:
- It is threatening for quarterlifers to face the world on their own, many for the first time, away from the securities of families of origin, earlier schooling, and, for older quarterlifers, familiar jobs, marriages, and surroundings.
- Unprecedented competition for highly specialized jobs in the twenty-first-century world is fierce, and the resultant emotional stress can be devastating.
- The pressure to select the right colleges and universities, the right preprofessional major and minor fields of study, and the right graduate schools, professions, and occupations, in order to succeed later in the work world, can be nerve-racking.
- Friendships are, at best, tentative, and committed, intimate relationships are often put on hold, because so much of oneās future is up in the air.
- Quarterlife concerns about success and failure in a changing economy and in an increasingly specialized, technological job market induce intense anxiety, depression, eating disorders, drug abuse, and, in extreme cases, violence and suicide.
- āDo what you love, and love what you doā seems for many quarterlifers to be a near-impossibility, either in college or in the job market, because the expectations are so high to secure future jobs that will confer security, status, wealth, and power benefits.
- Credit card debt, school loans, and personal bankruptcies are out of control.
We prefer not to think of the quarterlife experience as a crisis but rather as a series of exciting, real-life possibilities for students to make meaning. Although it is true that some students do live their quarterlife years in a narrative of panic, stress, and insecurity, others live in very different narratives of meaning. Here are some big and little meaning questions (some of the questions, which we have reworded, come from Robbins, 2004) that all quarterlifers are asking, in one way or another, on our campuses, regardless of the particular narratives they may inhabit (note the similarities between these quarterlife questions and some of the existential questions about meaning typically associated with midlife):
- Hopes and DreamsāHow do I find my passion? When do I let go of my dream? What if I donāt get what I want by a certain age? How do I start over, if I find I need to?
When is the right time to make a commitment? Is it possible to have a fulfilling relationship and a fulfilling job at the same time? What if I make the wrong choice on either side? Am I stuck forever?
- Educational ChallengesāAm I studying what is right for me? Why do I have to be so preoccupied with gearing up for graduate school and a career when Iād just like to enjoy exploring the arts and humanities? How well am I handling the freedom of college and being away from home for the first time? Why does my college experience neglect all the really important questions that come up for me regarding my hopes and dreams for the future?
- Religion and SpiritualityāWhat is the right religion for me? Why am I so critical of my childhood religion? Why is it that a noninstitutional spirituality seems, at times, to be so powerful for me? Will my parents be disappointed if I donāt remain loyal to the religion of our family? Why does God seem so far away from me on some days and so close at other times? Can any good come from doubting? Do I need a religious faith to be a moral person? Can I be good without God? Is there any other way to make a meaning that is enduring without religion or spirituality? Why is it that so many of my college friends think of religion in such negative terms? Will I be able to make it in the world without experiencing the consolations of organized religion along with its supportive communities? In what religion will I bring up my children, if I have any?
- Work LifeāWill I always have to choose between doing what I love or making lots of money? Will I ever really look forward to going off to work every day? Is it true that Iāll change careers many times before I retire? If, yes, then whatās the point of taking all this time to prepare for a particular career? Will I ever find work where I wonāt feel such stress to produce all the time? Does my work always have to be so competitive and bottom-line? Is it possible to find a career that is congruent with my personal values? Will I eventually have to settle for a career driven by my obligation to pay off the tens of thousands of dollars that I will owe in student loans? What does ābalanceā look like when work and stress build up? Why is it that I feel I have so much potential, but I am afraid to actualize it? Why am I so haunted by self-doubt?
- Home, Friends, Lovers, and FamilyāWhy is it so hard to live alone but also so hard to sustain a relationship? Is there really such a person as a āsoul mateā? How will I know when I fall in love with āThe Oneā? Am I loveable? How do I avoid feeling stuck in my relationships? Why canāt I find close, enduring friends who stay the course without drifting away? Is there something about me that causes this? Why is the thought of moving back in with my parents so terrible? Now that Iāve moved away, how do I make friends? Who will be my true friends, will I ever fit in, and how will I know who I can trust?
- IdentityāWhy is adulthood, at one and the same time, so threatening to me yet also so attractive? Why is it that I alternate between thinking that my life is either exciting or boring? How can I stop feeling overwhelmed about everything? Why do I worry so much about how I look? Why canāt I like who I am? Will I ever be truly happy with myself? Why do I feel so guilty when others claim I am privileged? Why is everyone so hung up on identity politics? Arenāt we all human beings underneath our skin color, sexual orientation, neighborhoods, and private parts?
Many of these questions are part and parcel of lifeās journey, no matter the journey-takerās age or stage. Still, quarterlifers seem to be experiencing a deluge of doubt and possibility that is unique to that place between adolescence and adulthood. Books and internet resources (Robbins & Wilner, 2001; Robbins, 2004; Steinle, 2005) have been popping up to fill the void. Each of these resources affirms the questions of quarterlife and offers a most welcome comfort to the intended audience: āQuarterlifer, you are not alone!ā
Notably, Robbins and Wilner (2001) and Steinle (2005) chose to populate their guides to the quarterlife with the voices and circumstances of real quarterlifers. The young adults featured in these books discard the mask of self-assuredness to reveal the confusion and pain they sometimes experience in trying to find their way. They wonder how to lead a more fulfilling, less āemptyā life than the one they know; they express their dismay at the realization that life is not always fair; and contrary to the Pew Research Center findings discussed in the preface, they want to know how to pursue a career that means something to them personally and will make a positive difference in their communities.
Regardless of gender, race, or social class, the respondents for each text underscore how universal many of these questions of meaning are. Although their social identities may frame the context in which they seek clarity, these quarterlifers express the same basic frustrations, excitements, worries, and questions (and even the same answers), regardless of the part their social identities suggest they play in life. Each of them wonders, through their interviews and written responses, whether they will discover a meaning and purpose worth living (and even dying) for.
Cycles of Quarterlife Meaning-Making
The students we have encountered are no different from the quarterlifers represented in print. We find that not only do our quarterlife students ask the same powerful questions, but they also pass through recognizable meaning-making cycles. Different from stages or other linear and sequential developmental steps, the cycles of meaning-making in the quarterlife tend to appear and reappear with each new meaning challenge. Some of us are more ready than others to undertake the meaning-making project. Being aware of these cycles helps us to find the best ways to time, fine-tune, and present meaning-making opportunities to the right audiences, at the most appropriate time, and in the most effective manner. However, we are always very cautious in the use of our developmental cycles, because we do not believe that any kind of sequencing should be the last word on who, how, when, and why to teach meaning-making.
If carried to an extreme, developmental ages and stages can often become tight little boxes that slot and plot students throughout their college experienceāand, sadly, long afterward. In some ways, we prefer Robert Havinghurstās phrase ādevelopmental tasks.ā Cycle is a metaphor for describing particular sequences of quarter-life development, and, in some senses, the metaphor works very well. But mastery of all the earlier tasks of childhood and early adult development is necessary before quarterlifers can move on to the next sequence (Havinghurst, 1972). The term cycle also indicates the somewhat repetitive nature of meaning-making. Meaning develops in spiraling layers over time, and we want to allow for the likelihood that quarterlifers will find themselves revisiting one or another cycle on their way to becoming more fully themselves.
We offer what follows as suggestive and not definitive, as observations based on our informal experiences with quarterlife students over the last several years. (We are indebted to David L. Norton, 1976, for inspiring us to think about the ongoing interplay between seeking self-fulfillment and working for the fulfillment of others. He calls this developing a āphilosophy of ethical individualism,ā and he believes that reconciling these two sometimes conflicting ideals is the challenge of a lifetime for all of us.) The existential theme for each stage is choice, with its different configurations, as students travel through the quarterlife cycle of meaning.
Cycle One: I choose myself. Quarterlifers realize at some point that they must start to take responsibility for their own lives. This moment of existential awareness may happen suddenly or gradually, over a brief or long period of time, at any age. This narrative of self-awareness and self-construction takes this form: āOnly I can live my life for myself. Nobody else can tell me who I am and what I must live for. From this moment on, Iām the one who has to make sense of my life. And Iāve got almost forever to do it, because Iām young and healthy, and I feel immortal. Even though this independence is challenging, Iām looking forward to being on my own, without anyone telling me what to do.ā
Cycle Two: Choosing myself is scary. Quarterlifers begin to develop a sense of their own finitude. Their self-awareness takes this shape: āI like choosing who I am and who I want to become, but Iām afraid choice carries with it certain risks. I can do anything that I want, it is true, but what is it I really want to do? The people whose advice I respect sometimes want different goals for me than I do. At times Iām afraid of letting down people whom I respect and love. I donāt want to disappoint anyone, but I also want to be independent and happy with my own choices about how to live, love, and work. But what is it I can do that is worthwhile? Who should I love? When should I make lifelong commitments, if at all? What should I believe? I need mentors and guides I trust and respect, but who should these people be? I know that others are depending on me to fulfill my promise as an adult, but just what are my dut...
