Introduction to The Turbulent Twenties Survival Guide

It wasn’t too hard to see the frustration on her face when she told us, “There really isn’t a guide on how to live your life after college!” A group of friends and I were having some drinks on a nice summer day when Heather, a twenty-six-year-old friend of a friend, happened to join us. When she walked up to our table, I noticed that her demeanor didn’t fit too well with the beautiful weather that sunny day. You could clearly see that something heavy was weighing on her mind, and it looked like it had been there for quite some time. She grabbed a seat across from me and as we chatted about our lives and what had brought us to Washington, DC, I happened to mention that I was working on a book about the psychology of life after college. As I began telling her that the book was about the new challenges twentysomethings were facing as they made the transition from college to today’s working world, I could see I’d piqued her interest. What I soon realized was that by mentioning the topic of the book, I had turned on an emotional faucet within her. In an instant she quickly started pouring out all the personal struggles she had grappled with since leaving college.

She began to talk about how lost she’d felt since graduation and how she didn’t really know what she wanted to do with her life. She spoke about hating her job and wanting to quit so she could move somewhere new. But almost in the same breath she mentioned that she wasn’t sure what she would do if she moved because she didn’t have much money and it was hard to find a good job with just a college degree. Her words sounded really familiar to me. I could easily empathize because, not only did I go through my own personal struggles after graduation, but I also had heard this kind of experience time and time again from almost every twentysomething I had encountered.