Showing posts with label Quarter Life Crisis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Quarter Life Crisis. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

The Grad School Diaries: Episode 15 - It's that time of the semester again











Oh dear.

It's that time again. The enrollment season. I should be done with my thesis and earned my Master's degree after having passed the compre exam that everyone's dreading about, but here I am with Episode 15 of Graduate School Diaries.

I am enrolling again this semester because I have not finished my MS Thesis.

I wanted to come up with the universal weapon reason for mass destruction bullshit: I got busy. But really, it's for real:

1. My kuya got married and we flew to Kalinga.
2. I was busy covering/working for the College Centennial Celebration.
3. I was busy planning and actually doing something for my plan B, or my longer-term plan to be in the university.
 Okay fine, here's another one:
4. I'm busy planning my super friends' bohemian hippie wedding that I really like to doing it for my favorite couple because it pumps my blood up and keeps me alive. (Plus I really love the couple).

But wait. I really have to get my degree this semester because I got my eyes set on a bigger adventure by next year.

#crossingfingers




Friday, October 5, 2012

The Grad School Diaries: Episode 14 - The dreaded "What's Next?"

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[Sen. Miriam] introduced herself to me a long time ago—I think I was 13 or 14 years old—she came up to me and said “You’re Heart Evangelista, right? Hi, my name is Miriam Defensor-Santago. I have one question for you: With all your success right now, what are you going to do next?”In her own words: Heart Evangelista

Right after I passed my comprehensive exam I was also asked:
After you finish your Masters, what are you going to do next?

I really dread the question.I thought by late twenties I got my life completely figured out, I was wrong. Especially someone like me who's not born out of a cookie cutter.

I amazed at some people who seems to have everything figured out. While some meet some one and fall in love during college, go through twenties together, be with each other for a decade or so, get hitched, have a baby and start a family, I have realized early on that I am different. I want something else.

I could have finished my masters and graduated this semester, but no. I am taking my sweet time trying to figure everything out. I've been reading some blogs of those in their early twenties to 25, they've been going through the exact same dilemma that I had when I turned 25. I mean, 25 is supposed to be the time you're ready for the next step, at 25 I was able to live alone, have a fabulous career, declare independence and live on my own in a 1BR apartment. Everything that I have imagined to be living sort-of Carrie Bradshaw like from Sex and the City, I was able to do that. But then, by the time I reached 26, I was confronted with a question: What's Next?

What's Next? I don't know.

I wish I could share wisdom but I really do not know. I'm facing my late twenties and I am just acting out on inspired thoughts with hope and positivity. While others around me have started settling down, I just try my best not to mess my life up by making intelligent choices and informed decisions.

Honestly, so far, it's been working out for me.



Wednesday, September 7, 2011

In Discourse & Dialectics

Where am I? I am somewhere in between. It's been a long while since I last wrote something personal, I've been training my hands to get into writing because I have this feeling that I'll be doing that in the next coming years. I've tried so hard not to write something personal, it's a good thing I have a really great support system called "tangible friends" that I can run to. Literally.

Lately I am in a personal discourse. While I enjoy the company of my good friends, I have not forgotten the therapeutic feel of writing. My Kuya says I am an online junkie and I kind of have been paying the price of putting some stuff in the world wide web. I got stalked,some of my amateur photos got stolen (not once!),  I've been plagiarized by some sore loser who probably got the biggest fuckin' surprise and I've been googled when I am not even that interesting to begin with.

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Last year, I had one of what they call quarter-life crisis. I've lived away from my folks since I was sixteen and by twenty five, I pretty much have done what I have always wanted to do. I started on my job two weeks after my college graduation, got promoted twice, explored several departments in the corporate world, met really good friends, made stupid mistakes, have been cautiously in love, partied on weekends, indulged in retail therapy, got my own 1BR apartment to live alone when I was twenty four. By the time I was twenty five, I was throwing an intimate housewarming party with the closest of my friends at work during thanksgiving.

Then what's next? I have not been taking the big jump about love. Well, I almost did but I already knew what I will be getting myself into so I chickened out. Then I got the thing they called quarter-life crisis, fucked my so-called job that I've been secretly dreading with then got quite depressed. I did the unthinkable (for me): I retreated.

It wasn't the easiest experience. I had to submit myself back to my folks and obey their rules when I've been calling the shots for the last  recent decade of my life. I've had to trace back familiar steps, get re-acquainted with people that I've known since I was a child. Not that I am complaining. While some I know who experience the same thing, they either marry the next thing that moves, played couch potato for a number of years, in my case I got myself, literally, an education.

And now, I only got few units left next semester and I feel like I have to decide which way I want to go. I know I am not the type who will resort to hubby hunting and on the biological clock watch, because If I wanted to have a family and a baby by the time I am twenty five, I would have done it already. And if the serious conversations with beau regarding marriage equates to getting engaged, then I would have been engaged twice.

I've always been secretly jealous and looked up to those people who are self-made and doing what makes them happy by pursuing and going after their passion. I sort of envy that smile that I see on their faces, wiping sweat off their forehead, cleaning up a job done and beaming with pride. I want to experience their inner glow in doing what they love.  For the first time, I really want to do something that I love to do, not something that I just happen to be effortlessly good at.

This laid back environment is growing on me. While I sometimes secretly miss the feeling of having my own space, I still recall how lonely it's been. That's why I am excited that I will be living with friends in a three-bedroom townhouse in the city, just like what I've always wanted my next move to be. We'll be like three roommates in those American TV series we see on TV but the question is, for how long? I have not figured out what my next move is yet.

Why is that when I finally feel like I have everything almost figured out for my next move, something beyond my control comes up?





Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Quarter Life Crisis

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I wish there was someone who guided me on this one. I did not know what the hell quarter life crisis was until I woke up one day swimming in one.

A friend sent me this text message last March 2010.

Quarter Life Crisis is a medical term for the phase after adolescence, usually for ages 21-30. 

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Some symptoms:
1. Feeling not good about your job. - check!
2. Frustration with relationships. - check!
3. Insecurity about life goals. - check!
4. Nostalgia for school. - check!
5. A sense that everyone is better than you. - check!
Furthermore, this is stage occurs shortly after young educated professionals enter the "real world", and then they realize that it is tougher, meaner and very much unforgiving...