Hindustan Times

Subscribe to ¼th Of MeNews FeedSubscribe to ¼th Of MeComments

HT Home / Blogs Home > ¼th Of Me / Quarter / They call us the adultescents

They call us the adultescents



So I thought I’d write a blog on my quarter life crisis because it sounded kind of depressingly cool to suffer from a quarter life crisis. Yes, I’m shallow like that. Besides, I didn’t have anything interesting to say about anything else. I first heard the term being used by my classmate in our second year of graduation. He was three years older to us and used to spout Tarantino dialogues while conversing. (So clearly he was going through a quarter life crisis.) At the time, I thought he made up the phrase and I was real impressed until a year later when I realised that everything he said had already been said by someone famous.

Turns out, this quarter life crisis business is serious stuff. It’s not just another twenty-something fad like drinking wine and eating cheese together or watching foreign films that you only half-understand and then pretend to love. A cursory Google search revealed websites, books, medical research, tutorials and of course several thousand other blogs devoted to this phenomenon that I so casually tossed around as fodder for my blog.

According to most sites, the phrase was coined by one Abby Wilner in 1997, who like all good ol’ twenty-somethings couldn’t figure out what to do with her life after she graduated from college. It must have hit her pretty hard considering she co-authored two whole books on it – Quarterlife Crisis: The Unique Challenges of Life in Your 20s and Quarterlifer’s Companion.

There is also another book by this dude called Lee Wellman who was “blindsided and knocked down by an anxiety disorder one idle winter afternoon” only to realise it was driven by a quarter life crisis. But he did get back up and recovered well enough to write a book called My Quarter Life Crisis. Wonder what it was about?

Then there’s an official QLC (let’s call it that because it just sounds cooler) website too – which claims that’s it’s a one-stop info shop for recent grads and beyond. I mean seriously, what do they sell – money and alcohol?

Several other people have written realms about this predicament and have described it far better than I ever could. Sample this blog post on Healthy Living – It’s a “sudden reality check where we overanalyze our current lifestyles in comparison to the lifestyles of our peers. For others it’s about doubt – always wondering if I’m making the right decisions. You wake up one day without parents or schools to point out your next step. Some of us are thrown expectations of adults but are still treated like children, and some claim to go to sleep most nights overwhelmed, constantly settling for safety, and wishing on the lottery instead of getting out there and chasing after all those big, bright dreams. Others are just trying to find the right balance between life, work, love.”

So here’s my take on the QLC: “The QLC is suffered by one who just cant be sensible enough to face the adult life without constant self-introspection and self-doubt and is either too stupid or too pathetic to just suck it all up and get over oneself. Also thinks of it as something that is depressingly cool and then goes on to write a blog about it.” Yeah, sounds about right.

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (8 votes, average: 4 out of 5)
Loading ... Loading ...

Posted by Tasneem Nashrulla on Wednesday, April 29, 2009 at 9:57 pm 
Filed under Quarter · Tagged , , , , ,

  · Comment (RSS) · Trackback
  • http://soumyajain.weebly.com/ Soumya Jain

    Oh well…that’s quite a harsh judgment that you have passed on people ’suffering’ from QLC. I guess even I am suffering from QLC, but I don’t think I am prepared to listen to such hard words about myself… :P Neways…great post. I am sure millions of us can identify with these traits…

    [Reply]

  • Sana

    Great Post Tasneem!Thanks

    [Reply]

    Aram Reply:
    April 30th, 2009 at 11:07 am

    Great Post!! I have enyered my twenties last year!! So I guess I need to wait n get ready to face this crisis!!
    Any tips? ;) :P

    [Reply]

    Mayank dixit Reply:
    April 30th, 2009 at 1:13 pm

    Tasneem,

    U r very much confuse about your life..and even every younger mind is confused towards his/her life…me also comes in the same category. They have penty of questions which pumps their minds to fell good or bad.Its your attitude which make a big difference to your life.

    But i think period of early twenties to thirty always plays an important role which defines our life in long run..so ,without thinking and comapring your life with your peers,it would be gud if try to live each and every day and try to get satisfaction as much as u can :-)

    [Reply]

  • Hradayesh

    I believe that the term “crisis” gives the whole phenomena a very negative connotation. It doesn’t have to be like that. Self-introspection is good, a little doubt is even better. They enable us to make wise decisions, be it Arjuna at the battlefield of Kurukshetra or a 20 something trying to figure out how to realise his/her dreams. As a 24 yr old who often finds himself in such situations, I can assure you that this process is neither depressing nor “depressingly cool” (I dont know what the latter means).

    [Reply]

  • http://mywritingkeeda.wordpress.com Ishmart Alec

    whoa. thats quite a post girl. im past the QLC, didnt really know that they called it as such.

    http://mywritingkeeda.wordpress.com

    [Reply]

  • Rohan Naringrekar

    I guess.. QLC is a state of confusion about finding the best suited perception about yourself, most of the time it is adopted from your peer group.. We all go through it .. and i accept.. im suffering from it too…..good post tasneem…

    [Reply]

  • http://axw11.wordpress.com/ axw11

    good if this strikes during the quarter life…coz u can still make changes in your life, define/redefine your purpose and adopt….coz if this strikes directly during mid life, with a family n all….then it is just guru Namdeo/Ramdeo baba…hence you see the throngs of people trying to make sense of it through spirituality….

    [Reply]

    Nikita Reply:
    May 1st, 2009 at 11:45 am

    I think 20’s is that set of 10 yrs where you undergo a whole lot of un-imaginable changes – from just being in college, moving on from carefree college life to regimented work life, to marriage and for a lot, even children.
    Its a time frame when you start with the nice and young feeling, and go through so much, that your first white strand appears even before you are 30 and believe me it can freak u out!
    I guess these 10 years have so much action, you are bound to go through some kind of crisis or the other… Still 2 yrs away from entering into 30s hopefully they would be less eventful.
    Now that was one depressing message… sigh sometimes i wish i was in college again!

    [Reply]

  • Samar Halarnkar

    I am nearly half life and I still have no crisis. What’s going on?

    [Reply]

    Tasneem Reply:
    May 1st, 2009 at 6:22 pm

    It’s called denial Samar :)

    [Reply]

    Ishmart Alec Reply:
    May 1st, 2009 at 8:53 pm

    lol.

    http://mywriterkeeda.wordpress.com

    [Reply]

  • Parag

    I couldn’t agree more. QLC has got everything to do with the events between the age of 20 and 30,since some people realize it right after college and some take longer. But they all finally come around to the fact,that with a majority of us Indian kids,its not what we want to become in life out of genuine interest,it’s about what is more viable. In the race to make it big and “chasing after all those big, bright dreams”,we finally seem to realise the significance of decision making.Self-introspection and self-doubt are spin-offs.

    “Success and failure are only choices we make” — Luck by Chance :)

    Quater Life Crisis – I think,with the amount of alchohol we smoke n the cigarrettes we drink, the onset of QLC should ideally begin at 15 years of age,hic !!

    [Reply]

    coffee break Reply:
    May 3rd, 2009 at 3:44 pm

    3 questions:

    1. just where did the quality of MY life’s crises make that drunken leap from depressingly cool to stone cold depressing?
    2. could the academic crisis that was my second year of graduation explain why i never reached my third year of graduation?
    3. come to think of it, did i miss my qlc marker because my whole life has been one wild crisis after another?

    [Reply]

  • Pallavi Tomar

    Hey…v nice blog…i am waiting for a book to come from your end soon :-)

    you rhyme with http://stricter-gun-control.blogspot.com/

    [Reply]

  • http://www.my-unread-pages.blogspot.com Swati Thampan

    hey tht’s a mean thing to say!!!! but ya i have almost ALL the symptoms..why else would i reply to a blog written by a QLC “patient” lol

    [Reply]

  • Atul

    Being 20 something- We all go through it, the time when the aspirations are at its peak, everyone wants to make it big, there are so many choices/options and you want to chose the best one the most viable one. Why do we chose to compare ourselves against our peers is to make sure if they’d well in whatever they chose and if you wanna follow the same platform.

    Self introspection and doubts come along with it, because we take every step with utmost surity that it’d turn out to be the way you presumed. Its like the quality check which is very important in almost all the spheres and that it measures your success viz a viz your efforts. To be labeled such people as confused and pathetic is sure uncalled for.

    and btw, weren’t you self introspecting yourself because you accept you are going through the “QLC” and yet you term it as the most pathetic thing.

    [Reply]

  • Anonymous

    RTI act2005 is the only act which can send Smt Sonia Gandhi Rahul Gandhi Priyaka Bedra and Robert Bedra in Jail and Sardar jee want to amend it now

    [Reply]

  • Anil khanna

    india is home for 1/3rd of worlds poor.if you do not worry,bettter worry about where next meal is comming from.degradation of soil is pinching and cost 20%of output every year.agriculture will become unviable.individuals whose skill area is land should be allowed to join government.

    [Reply]