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I was chatting with a friend at a bar a while ago and we started talking about how meeting people after college was so much different compared to our twenties. He told me, “I definitely think that it’s more difficult finding new friends now, compared to college. DC may not be as bad as other places, but after graduation it’s a much more diverse world than college was. It takes much more time and effort to find someone who’s on the same page as you, whereas in college you would find yourself in the same classes, or going to the same parties, or going to sporting events with people who had similar interests. There are bars and things like that that attract similar types of people, but it’s just not quite as conducive to meeting people as it was in college.”
If you’re a twentysomething, you know exactly what I’m talking about. After the endless opportunities to meet people in classes that changed each semester, in tons of organizations and clubs, or in the dining hall and dorms where you could talk for hours on end fades away after graduation, it can become damn hard to meet people you make a connection with. You know, this whole thing reminds me of me of a Chia Pet.
You’ve all seen the commercials—Cha, Cha, Cha, Chia!—and getting your Chia Pet to grow is pretty easy. All you have to do is get the right ingredients, mix them up, spread them over the surface of your favorite ceramic animal, add some nourishing water and sunlight, and watch it grow. Well, a similar thing happens during college, where you gather the proper students, mix them up, spread them around campus, add some nourishing classes, organizations, social events, and alcohol, let some time pass, and boom—watch all the friendships and casual relationships blossom. One of the major reasons why Chia Pets and campus relationships seem to bloom so effortlessly is because all the right ingredients necessary for their growth are put together by some external entity. Now, in the case of the Chia Pet, what would happen if you didn’t have the right ingredients? What if you didn’t mix the ingredients properly and put them in the right environment to grow but, rather, spread them around haphazardly? What if the proper nourishment was not given to them?
In doing research for my book, I was so surprised by how many graduates told me that either they had become depressed or knew of fellow twentysomethings who had developed major depression. Along with depression, many spoke about feeling extremely nervous about how their life was unfolding because they did not know what the next step was and felt like they were simply wondering through their twenties. Because of nature of this transitional period, it is extremely common to struggle with an array of negative emotions that arise from all the challenges they face after college.
