Anxiety, Career Choice and Aptitudes! What's a 'Quarter-lifer' to do?

By Dr. Thomas N. Tavantzis, CEO Innovative Management Development, Adjunct Faculty, Organizational Development and Leadership, Saint Joseph's University

Three students - Gail 29, John 26, and Sam 21 - though of different ages, share much in common. They are in the midst of developing themselves so they can successfully launch their careers and, well, their lives! Each is still single, all live independently from their parents (Sam is in college) while experiencing (considerable) ongoing parental support. They all share trying to develop themselves as people, finding careers they can be passionate about, but all appear stuck, in large part, from the consequences of too little self-knowledge. They're grasping for information. How do I go about making decisions? How do I problem-solve? What are my learning styles? What work environment do I want? What are my values? My impact on others? My emotional resources? How do I learn the basics for self-management?

A recent article in the Philadelphia Inquirer called 'Quarterlife: [It] Gets A Whole Lot Harder' discusses the challenges faced by young adults at the quarter point of their lives. My first reaction was: a whole lot harder than what? Given that I am past 2 quarter lives (or at my half-life), a father of 3 "quarter-lifers' and constantly around "quarter-lifers', I think I can safely say that having a period of my life described by the label Quarter-life strikes me at first as yet another useless marketing label created to sell a book. On second thought, maybe it does serve a purpose. Perhaps it can serve to demarcate a clearer time in life. Today, figuring out life in the midst of its complexity and chaos is a challenge for everyone, including quarter-lifers, especially if one clings to outdated and rigid ideas about young adults.


Current World
Right now we are in the midst of several disasters simultaneously: BP, 2 wars, a poor economy, terrorism, perhaps another recession, job loss, catastrophic climate change, a private sector rift with ethics issues driven by greed run amok, while Government is seen - strangely enough - as both overly powerful and intrusive, and ineffectual and broken. Does that sum it up? This all while continuing scientific and technological change inundates us daily. These major external issues only serve to heighten our overall anxiety and filter anxiety down to the young adults planning a direction for their lives. They face a planning process which is already compounded by the usual challenges of the Quarter-lifer (ages 20-30) - lack of self-knowledge, confusion about work-roles, fear of commitment, helplessness, and the sense of frustration caused by instability and change. Everyone ends up at wit's end in this phase of the Quarter-life, including (and perhaps especially), the young adult's parent(s)! For the Quarter-lifer, the central challenge only heightens the importance of staying focused on what needs to done. The good news is that, no matter what the problems facing society or the economy, the basic issues facing the Quarter-lifer remain the same: his or her main task at this phase of life is still to develop and refine a vision or a blueprint for a happy and productive life ahead.

Young Adulthood
During this stage, Donald Super - and most career theorists would agree --
considers that the most significant developmental task is Establishment. Young adults go through a series of "trial" jobs (Exploration Stage), before establishing themselves in what seems a stable career. On both sides of the Establishment stage they meet with a series of crises when they are forced to find answers to the basic questions life poses. At each crisis or turning point, life poses the same essential questions to each of us, and we have to find new answers as we outgrow our last ones. The questions are:

1. How can I best contribute or be productive?
2. How do I find satisfaction and, yes, even passion in my work?
3. How do I balance work and love (my intimate relationships)?

This process of establishing oneself is the primary task associated with young adulthood. Once stabilized, Consolidation and Advancement become the next developmental tasks.

In this stage you are faced with the consequences of entering and completing college. You have been in two worlds (high school and college) populated primarily by your peers, and you are suddenly launched to a place where you need to find meaningful work. At the same time, you face hearing the voices of your parents, and seeing your own family going through changes. You may even understand that they have not stood, frozen in time, while you were in college during those 4 (or was it 5) years! And in the midst of all this, you still need to focus on becoming your own person, the main event in your life. To become your own person, you need to continue acquiring self-knowledge. However, while the basic issues are the same today perhaps what has changed most is the length of time of this stage, as well as its character!

Key Themes Impacting Young Adults
Some key themes that reflect the lengthening and complexity of this life phase emerge from our research (see Transition to Adulthood, Spring 2010). They are:

- Need for higher education
- Life expectancy expanding
- Financially greater challenges in establishing oneself
- Cultural change in attitudes towards sex
- Greater focus on personal development and maturity

All these result in the need of young adults for more ongoing support from their parents to help them launch their careers successfully. The old markers of 18 or 21 years of age are now meaningless. The notice we used to hear from parents (hopefully no longer) "once you are 21 you are on your own" no longer makes sense. The period we are in now resembles more the pre-industrial world in which independence was acquired over a longer period of time, and within the confines of the supportive family of origin.

"Changes in the coming-of-age schedule are, in fact, nothing new. A century or more ago, the transition to adulthood was also a protracted affair. In an agriculture-based economy, it took many young adults some time to gain the wherewithal to leave home and form a family. Today young adults take far longer to reach economic and social maturity than their contemporaries did five or six decades ago. In large part, this shift is attributable to the expansion of higher education beginning in the late 1960s."(Furstenberg, 2010).

Unfortunately, as Furstenberg (2010) and others point out, societal supports for these changes are non-existent. Mass media recognized the gap and came up with pejorative labels that made it seem that we were experiencing a breakdown in personal character, calling young adults who return home 'boomerangers' and parents who intervening in the college or work life of their children 'helicopter' parents. What is often not addressed is that young adults in their senior high school years are continuing to make decisions with little basic information (Career Institute for Education and Workforce Development, 2002), or that "too few depart high school with the agility, self-reliance, critical-thinking...needed to adapt in the future" (Feller, 2003). From our personal experience and conversations with students 'things don't get much better in college'.

Young Adult Development
The area we are most interested in -- and in which we can provide the greatest support - is "greater focus on personal development and maturity." IMD has been working with young adults and their parents since 1986. Over the years it has become increasingly apparent that the launch of young adults has changed, and that over time the solutions we used to offer have also shifted away from the therapeutic counseling interventions of the early '90's to the career, life and vision-development interventions of the mid-1990's and since. The approach we have developed over time is less about focusing on weaknesses and remediation and more on identifying strengths and internal resources, and on developing the knowledge to act with greater emotional intelligence. This approach relies quite heavily on the Highlands Ability Battery as a foundational piece. Over the years we have found (and we have tried!) no better tool for assessing natural hard-wired talents. In addition to the Ability Battery and our assessment of hard-wired Abilities, or as so many traditionalists refer to them, Aptitudes, we embrace a 7- Factor Model that explores the complexity of the individual and provides a blueprint for self-direction. Due to the limitations of space I will only direct my comments to the Ability Battery and in a future article discuss the 7 other factors.

SAM
Sam is 21 and heading into his junior year of college with his major undecided. His experience is that the school doesn't reach out to him, and that he, like many others, "can't" find the Career Center. His parents feel out of control as they see their child flounder, but they try to work within the university system from a distance. Sam located our website and suggested to his parents that he take the Highlands Ability Battery. Let me underline this: Sam took the initiative. Parental anxiety momentarily subsided as action took place. (Rule of thumb - when working with young adults, action, any action, is always preferable to paralysis in the case of life and work goals!). After taking the Battery, Sam and I met to review and discuss his report. Among the many interesting results of the Battery we discussed during our 2-hour review (while the CD I burned recorded our meeting for Sam's parents to hear later) indicated a strong hard-wired basis for Sam to prefer a smaller school (or at least smaller classes), with more opportunities to interact in class, with an emphasis on experiential learning and tangible hands-on outcomes. The large liberal arts curriculum wasn't a good fit for Sam. Initially, Sam's parents had taken many of their cues from the High School Counselor at the private school their son was attending. However, the tools available to the counselor, as well as the school's own marketing approach, prevented creative thinking about what might have been a better college choice for Sam.

John
John, 27, a graduate of one of our nation's most prestigious colleges, easily found jobs but never chose one with adequate information about his own strengths and resources. In college he availed himself of little help - though he did visit the Career Center once. (He didn't find it especially helpful.) Upon graduation, not knowing what else to do, he followed his peers into lucrative positions as Financial Consultants - because that was where the money was. His anxiety about what to do was momentarily settled.

Now, 27 years old and 3 jobs later, he worries about his future fate as he watches the "grey men in their forties glumly going to their cubicles," and he wonders if he will always be dissatisfied with his work. When I discussed John's results with him, it was clear that he needed to find an area of expertise, that his longing for a passionate commitment to a job was as much a part of him as his eye color. He had a short learning curve and he longed to work in an environment in which he could contribute to long-range solutions.

At the same time, he needed a fast-paced, problem-solving environment in which his ability for strong rapport-building could be maximized. Until now, everyone had detected only one of John's abilities - his gift for working with numbers. That one gift appeared to shape everyone's view of what John should be doing and in turn limited the information John had about himself! His parents were very supportive of John's search for a new direction, because they could see the long-term benefit of his getting it right.

Gail
Gail, 29, graduated from a University with a Communications degree, and never quite "latched onto an area of interest". She did things and landed jobs as "opportunities" rather then from a sense of direction or purpose. Fortunately, her natural gifts identified her as a rising star. Eventually, she rose to a management position in a retail store! Her problem was that she wanted to choose for herself what she would commit to. And it wasn't retail management! Gail had managed to remain untouched all through High School (wealthy suburban) and University by any career development information. Gail's parents supported her in looking at her alternatives knowing that her choice was important to her. Overlooked by Gail and the others were her artistic talents, coupled with her talent for seeing the big picture, for sensing the gifts of others, and for helping them succeed. All this worked together to make her excellent at roles in which she taught others, fueled by her passion for delivering concrete results.

Each of these young adults and their search for fulfillment are not offered as proof of my awesome powers as a psychologist! (Although my family, grad students and clients think I am pretty amazing!) Rather, these are fairly standard outcomes of our work with The Highlands Ability Battery and the 2-hour feedback session. The Battery is not just an assessment - it is brought to life and becomes a life intervention by the power of the 2-hour feedback conference.

Concluding Remarks
With each of these adults, their parents were actively involved in supportive roles. They assisted their adult children in sorting out alternatives, knowing the value to be derived from taking time to explore and put together a tentative plan for success. In turn, each of the young adults found the Battery enlightening. In some ways I often feel as though I am giving water to a very thirsty person. John, for instance, was astounded that he had never been exposed to any assessment as comprehensive and penetrating as the Battery. He declared, "this should be mandatory in all colleges and high schools."

Is this the final piece of the story for each of these people? Of course not. They all left our feedback conference with homework - read your complementary copy of "Don't Waste Your Talent", listen to your CD or MP3, read and re-read your 34-page report, and if you're not entering one of our workshops, contact me in a month on your progress. I provide them with all these things so they can move in the direction of developing a career- and life-vision, and use the 7 other factors that go into creating a personal strategic plan and a Career Vision.

In the midst of an environment, breeding disaster and failure at the economic-environmental-social-political level, with faltering signs of occasional improvement, each of these young people will do what he or she can to get by. They will all share a common desire to contribute more of themselves, to feel passion and live a valued life. Each of them found his or her way to our door and signed up for The Highlands Ability Battery - the starting place for self-knowledge for thousands of people over the years...a responsibility we take very seriously!