Quiet Declarations

A couple of weeks ago Time Magazine ran a fantastic cover story entitled Grow Up? Not So Fast attempting to dissect the life of what it somewhat absurdly labels the “twixter”. (For Time non-subscribers like myself, Mike Yaconelli and Paul Swartz have taken the liberty of borrowing the article in full.) I strongly recommend reading the story to get a more complete picture, but here’s the twixter defined in brief:

Everybody knows a few of them—full-grown men and women who still live with their parents, who dress and talk and party as they did in their teens, hopping from job to job and date to date, having fun but seemingly going nowhere. Ten years ago, we might have called them Generation X, or slackers, but those labels don’t quite fit anymore….

In the past, people moved from childhood to adolescence and from adolescence to adulthood, but today there is a new, intermediate phase along the way. The years from 18 until 25 and even beyond have become a distinct and separate life stage, a strange, transitional never-never land between adolescence and adulthood in which people stall for a few extra years, putting off the iron cage of adult responsibility that constantly threatens to crash down on them. They’re betwixt and between. You could call them twixters.

The story goes on to play with two competing hypothesis: the possibility that postgraduates are reaping the benefit of generations of progress by taking a few additional years to enjoy and discover themselves, and the fear that society has made the transition to adulthood too difficult and leaving postgraduates overwhelmed by indecision and anxiety. I might concede that generations of progress have made it — for some of us — economically feasible to stall a bit. However, I entrench myself firmly in the camp that believes we’ve somehow managed to resocialize ourselves from realists to idealists, and I’ll further contend that we’re worse off for it.

You might recall hearing the term Quarterlife Crisis, a phenomenon popularized by Alexandra Robbins in her book of the same name. I can’t recommend the book because I haven’t actually read it, but from what I understand it attempts to flesh out (albeit fails to offer any solution for) the reasons why twentysomethings seem poised to succeed and instead find themselves plagued by flightiness, emotional distress, and indecision.

This and similar topics of conversation have come up often — perhaps too often — among friends in recent weeks as myself and others continue to reassess where we are and where we’re going in life. One friend astutely pointed out that this is a uniquely middle-class problem, that the egregiously rich face few real consequences of indecision and the poor can’t afford such a luxury. I’ll agree: it is the middle class along that possesses the capability of finding itself simultaneously relieved and tormented by parent-sponsored insurance policies like prepaid college degrees, co-signed leases and limitless room and board in the event of “emergencies” like transience or self-reflection.

In more than one instance the Time story presents twixters as overwhelmingly selfish: irresponsibly and image-consciously embedding themselves in debt in order to have the latest cars, fashion, and furniture, partying as if money were no object, and refusing to accept any work believed to be “beneath them” in spite of mounting bills that often force continued parental reliance. But the article also affords twentysomethings a generous measure of deference to the nobility of their cause:

But whatever the cause, twixters are looking for a sense of purpose and importance in their work, something that will add meaning to their lives, and many don’t want to rest until they find it. “They’re not just looking for a job,” Arnett says. “They want something that’s more like a calling, that’s going to be an expression of their identity.” Hedonistic nomads, the twixters may seem, but there’s a serious core of idealism in them.

So is this primarily an internal or external quandry, or is it both? I’ll contend that it can easily be both, wrapped in a blanket of excess idealism. It’s true that many of us are enjoying ourselves to some extent, but how many twentysomethings claim they’re just living life to the fullest when really they’d settle down in a heartbeat if only they found the perfect job and/or the perfect someone. Key word: perfect. And not just perfect in a localized sense; now it’s perfect as perfection is defined globally by mass communication. We aren’t just proving ourselves to our hometown anymore. Moreover, we’ve somehow become socially adjusted that anything less than perfect is “settling”. When did idealism shift from something we aspire to approach and become something we expect nothing less than to achieve?

We’ve all but resigned ourselves to the fact that collectively our generation can’t hope to exceed our parents’ economic success, and most of us hold out only a glimmer of hope that we’ll be among the lucky few who beat the bell curve. Instead we’ve chosen to redefine our vision of success to capture a comparative advantage over our parents. We may not find ourselves as successful financially but at least, we hope, we can engineer our lives to be happier and healthier. But in focusing on whether society is better off for these efforts the Time authors breeze past an equally important question: do twentysomethings even have a chance of realizing these newfound goals? Are they truly happier by and large, or do they simply wait longer to realize what they should have realized a decade or more earlier: that making the best decision you can make at the time in spite of the possibility of limiting options is not settling; it’s merely living life as it happens.

Picture Sex in the City sans Carrie’s last-episode reward: seven seasons of four women with success, money, and friendship who remain perpetually unsettled because perfect happiness continues to elude them. Time is right: 30 is the new 20. Maybe it’s because a college degree is the new high school degree, and soon a postgraduate degree will be the new college degree. Whose bright idea was it to tell 40% of the population that a lucrative white-collar job would await them if only they continued their education — but who could in good conscience discourage education? What rocket scientist sold so many students on law as the path to success that the number of current law students exceeds the total number of practicing lawyers — but what pessimist would tell an aspiring young professional not to follow her dream?

Whatever their faults, twentysomethings or twixters or whatever one wants to call them aren’t ambivalent. It’s not that we don’t care, and as a group we aren’t necessarily irresponsible. Perhaps we’ve seen our parents incur so much debt to finance our futures that it seems all to appropriate for us to live on financial and social credit until we discover a way to repay the investment with dividends. It’s not that we’re just waiting around for something to happen to us. We’re just slow to adjust to the reality that, as Lucius Beebe puts it, “all I want is the best of everything and there’s very little of that left.”

Now that I’m no longer AWOL, I’ve really enjoyed playing catch-up on reading the blogs of friends and fellow Vanderbilt grads. It turns out Jacob Grier and Joel Hart have decided that the Confederate Memorial Hall issue is an old dying horse worth beating in their spare time. For those who aren’t familiar with the background, Jacob links to a summary that will suffice.

While in grad school I wrote a paper on the CMH issue as a public relations crisis, and I think my most intriguing revelation was how the issue was simultaneously so trite and so potent. The university seemingly spearheaded the change and endured the ramifications primarily because it was sick and tired of the broken record public outcry every few years. However, the Powers That Be also cleverly realized that its mission of appealing to a more national constituency would be strengthened by every news mention of Vanderbilt fighting a Southern image, even those accusing it of politically correct pandering. In short, all press is good press for Vanderbilt in this story.

Like Jacob, I’ve never had a strong position on the issue and yet I do feel some pause should be given whenever a blank check is issued for history to be written by the victors. As such, I enjoyed a recent editorial by Bill Carey (author of Chancellors, Commodores, and Coeds: A History of Vanderbilt University) that places “offensive” history in context. Personally, I feel this should have all run its course by now and “sticks and stones” is my attitude toward both sides at this point.

Far more immediate and intersting to me is Jacob’s resurrected enthusiasm for efforts to use the Vanderbilt Card off campus. As I expressed in his comment section, I find the movement unsettlingly devious and ultimately futile. For the record, he and I have extensively debated the merits of Vanderbilt’s movement toward Residential Colleges. His position as I understand it is that the necessary limitations of choice in such a system, such as more restrictive housing and dining options, are contrary to revealing student preferences through free market choices. Conversely, I believe that it is necessary and proper for a university to act as it sees fit to build a community that enhances learning, and that student choice is exercised at the front end through the decision to matriculate and enroll. Our debate crosses easily into the merits and drawbacks of artificial campus monopolies such as Vanderbilt Dining and our conflicting opinions on related student choice issues such as restaurant franchising on campus franchises and use of the Card off campus.

Interesting topics, at least to me — I’m sure this isn’t the last reference this website will see to either discussion.

For three days last week I was held prisoner in New Orleans, and sadly I’ve only now recovered from missed work and sleep. My intent in returning to Louisiana, which friends know is not high on my list of favorite travel destinations, was sound — joining an old friend and recent Virginia Tech grad to watch his team play Auburn in the Sugar Bowl. Things seemed tolerable enough until tragedy struck by way of a hotel valet.

The durability of my 1995 Ford Taurus, which has traveled 150,000 with me across 43 states, has long been in question and in fact the car has recently been retired in favor of a new automobile to be determined soon. (Suggestions welcome!) So to weather the trip, I borrowed my dad’s Bonneville for the drive, intending to park it in the hotel deck for 2 days and pay the valet storage charge. As luck would have it, I got a call on the first evening explaining that one of the valets spun out a Camaro in the deck and destroyed my dad’s bumper. Unfortunately, this particular car model requires a special bumper that the body shop would have to FedEx overnight from Texas, meaning my friend and I would have to stay an extra day. My options? Drive a bumperless car home and get three estimates for reimbursement, or stay an extra night for free and let the locals take care of the problem. Hence, trapped.

Being stranded in New Orleans is kind of like being shipwrecked on a desert island except that it’s much dirtier and the graduation rate is lower. Also, even islands are above sea level — one direct hit from a category 4 hurricane and this town is history. The locals seem to love it, but honestly, I just don’t get it. I’ve never seen people so proud of settling their town on such inhospitable terrain. Thanks to the subtropical climate everything is either decomposed or fermented, and the only two seasons are too hot to think (which explains quite a bit actually) and price gouge the tourists. Travel out to the Garden District and you realize that the city is actively practicing apartheid; take a big whiff of the air downtown and you understand why residents prefer to stay permanently drunk. Got priorities? Driver’s licenses are issued at age 15 and drive-thru daiquiri stores are a local highlight.

In case you were wondering, this is my fourth trip to New Orleans and I’ve been to Mardi Gras twice. Some say that those who only come for Mardi Gras are missing the true experience, but if the true experience is anything like what I’ve seen then I respectfully disagree. Stay in the French Quarter, nurse Hurricanes until the potholes blur, stake out the flashers on the balcony to distract from the smell, and then get the hell out of Dodge thankful that the role of the tourist is to exploit and retreat. I had my fun and I even enjoyed my extra day, but after being stranded I’ll make sure I have multiple exit strategies in place before calling on the Big Easy again.

Score: Titans 24, Lions 19

Offbeat Ruminations:

Final Thoughts:

Well, at least they finished the season with a win, not that it’s much consolation. This has been far more painful than I thought it would be when I got the clever idea to write these updates. The Titans aren’t really that bad, and yet they were that bad, for reasons mentioned over the course of these updates. And so ends my debut as a fledgling sports commentator with a readership of three poor souls and a season of losing teams. Gratuities welcomed.