This week, another one of my high school classmates welcomed their first baby, something that is absolutely mindblowing to me as someone who was the oldest in all of my classes. While I know everyone’s paths and lives are different from each others’, and indeed different from what is shown on social media, all these big life events in the lives of my high school classmates have made me feel shaky about my own maturity. And given the big comparison game that women are trapped into by society, I expect I’m not the only person who feels like this at times.
Although I’m very happy and comfortable with where I am in my life, pursuing a degree I’m passionate about, in a loving relationship, and active in causes that I care about, seeing my friends who are a whole year younger than me getting engaged and having children makes me question if I’m very mature at all. College is fantastic in that I’ve gotten all of the opportunities I have, but it’s not the ‘real world’, as it were. All my jobs have been on-campus jobs. All of my life experience has been through the lens of academia for the most part. And although I’m aware that at this point in my life, I’m not ready to have kids, as much as I may want them, I feel insecure about the fact that people I know already are having them, and I’ve been in academia all this time.
Being in your early 20s is as weird of a limbo as I suspect the rest of your 20s are. Looking at the fact that I graduate in a year and will start applying for grad school jobs when I haven’t even had an off-campus job or house makes me question if I’ll even be ready for such a big step. In some ways, I feel almost underprepared for the world outside of college, and that uncertainty is frightening at times. Although I have goals for myself and I know what I want from my life, the fact that other people have gotten a jump on it so quickly leaves me feeling as though I won’t be ready when the time comes for me.
Life isn’t a race, of course. All this nervousness is all in my head, and surely will be kicked out as I escape the undergrad experience and branch out into the wider world. But while I scroll social media and worry about if I’m ready for all the big milestones I want from my life, it’s hard not to worry that I’m doing everything wrong. And although it’s silly and something I am working on, I wonder how many other women are feeling the same things at this stage in our lives.