The concept of "emerging adulthood" can best be described as that transitional phase of human life nestled right in between adolescence and adulthood. It's a kind-of developmental purgatory. And its trademark is the distinct belief that you should feel like an adult, but for some reason you don't not quite yet at least.
The so-called "timetable of adulthood" seems to be changing altogether. In generations past, the progression from adolescence to adulthood was traditionally smooth and uninterrupted. Now, however, many go through a period of unsettled nonchalance and optimistic uncertainty typically crystallizing in their early 20s.
A few weeks ago Robin Marantz Henig wrote an article for The New York Times Magazine titled "What Is It About 20-Somethings?," which focused on Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, a psychology professor from Clark University, currently spearheading the movement to recognize the 20s as a distinct chapter of human development. The way Arnett sees it, the 20s are an entirely new, entirely discrete phase of psychosocial development: an almost pre-adulthood.
The psychological profile associated with emerging adulthood hinges on feelings of instability, identity exploration, self-focus, as well as a sense of potentiality. Paradoxically, these emerging adults are less certain about the future, but somehow more optimistic and more confident than a fully-ripened adult. Their youthful idealism is still intact.
The fact that many of us probably qualify as emerging adults isn't a bad thing. I even hesitate to use the terms "late-bloomer" or "Gen X Slacker" as the media do. Americans don't just turn 20 and instantly transform into Van Wilder. At the same time however, in the current environment the average 20-something has more freedom and more flexibility in his or her life than has ever been the case. Most 20-somethings today aren't sure about where they will live, whom they will be with or what job they will hold a few years down the line. The whole school, job, marriage, mortgage paradigm of the 1950s simply doesn't exist anymore.
Such freedom and uncertainty, I believe, has translated into a cultural shift away from learning more concrete, vocational or otherwise ultra-specific skill sets at a young age. Since we aren't sure about what we want in the future, we are hesitant to commit to a specific field. Thus, more and more we are opting for broad liberal arts educations (i.e. "college educations"), which focus on teaching students how to "think" more generally, rather than how to complete a certain task. That's why we're at Dartmouth after all, right? In fact, the college enrollment rate of recent high school graduates aged 16 to 24 has jumped from 45.1 percent in 1960 to over 70 percent today.
If a 20-something doesn't know what to do with his or her life, he or she is encouraged to go to college. But college (at least in the United States where the liberal arts dominate), more so than any other place, is an environment that embraces this uncertainty and truly caters to personal exploration. Thus, while college is supposed to prepare us for adulthood and pilot us toward a given occupation, in reality it might be the reason for the developmental speed bump known as "emerging adulthood" in the first place.
We're all Dartmouth students. We're all "well-educated": we dissect Plato, trudge through Faulkner and oversee complex chemical reactions in laboratories. But how many of us could build a house or design a building? How many of us could repair a transmission or hunt for and prepare dinner? A lot of what is taught at a school like Dartmouth isn't necessarily practical. Though the process itself might be, the actual information we're absorbing isn't essential. For the most part, we are being taught how to think how to approach problems. We are treading water: honing our skills in the classroom until we're ready to figure out our futures.
So, if Dartmouth truly is postponing our adulthood instead of preparing us for it, then is the modern postsecondary education system in this country really the optimal approach? Are we wasting time overeducating ourselves "preparing" ourselves with abstract theory and unimportant minutiae, instead of cultivating experts in more practical, utilitarian fields from a young age? Perhaps we just like the feeling of freedom too much: those rough-hewn, I-can-do-anything possibilities lurking just around the corner.
