The Existential Crisis (Or The Young Adult Version of a Mid-Life Crisis)

Every day since finishing school at the naive age of eighteen, I have had at least one existential crisis a week (okay, that might be an exaggeration but they do happen more frequently then I'd like). This is down to how badly prepared I was before leaving school. Harsh, but I feel like schools fail children and parents try to protect them, which combined makes for some very confusing early years in the adult world.

These existential crises were minimal in university, not actually starting until the middle of my second year. I think everyone who goes to university gets this. I'll call it "the grass is greener on the other-side" revelation. This is where you are struggling with your academic work, freaking out about the amount of debt you've amassed thus far with the optional addition of watching your non-university friends blossom under their non-university life choices. It goes like this:

• Doubting you've made the right decision.
• Doubting you'll ever get a job related to whatever degree you are pursuing.
• Thinking you might be more successful if you'd stayed at home and found work/done an apprenticeship/lived off Mummy and Daddy.
• Panicking about the amount of debt under your name.
• Figuring that you'll never succeed at your coursework/exams.
• Feeling like a prize loser.
• While secretly being very, very homesick.

It is the first time you seriously doubt yourself and your choices, but, like I said, it's more a case of thinking the grass is greener on the other side. That's all down to the fact your imagination is free to speculate about the other route you could have taken, whereas you already know all there is to know about the route you did choose. The other side still has potential and opportunities open, whereas the place you stand now is limited and certain doors closed off by the choices you have already made.

Since leaving university I've been having existential crises pretty regularly. It comes from having an uncertain future and fervently regretting past decisions (unfairly, I might add, but the panic fuels a biased perception of the way things stand). The symptoms of this full-on existential crisis are different from the midway university panic in that they have a pretty hefty impact on how I currently feel about myself and how I might move forwards in order to allay my fears.

See, this thought that gets in your head, the one where you don't know what the hell you're doing with your life, and it's based on what you did to get there (i.e. completing a degree). It has the added kick of making you feel like you're wasting time (time that you become suddenly aware of is limited) and you panic that you're missing out on key life moments. You should be travelling, socialising, living on your own, working, earning your own money ... but you're not, you're unemployed (in my case). You doubt everything you've ever done and you fear that nothing will turn out right. You have no future.

So this is life since leaving school and is probably a cycle a lot of people go through, almost like a rite of passage for all young adults to go through in order to official "grow-up." I would most definitely describe it as the young adult's version of a midlife crisis.