Will You Sprint, Stroll or Stumble Into a Career?

The New York Times:

At the age of 18, G. Stanley Hall left his home in the tiny village of Ashfield, Mass., for Williams College, just 35 miles away, with a goal to “do something and be something in the world.” His mother wanted him to become a minister, but the young Stanley wasn’t sure about that plan. He saw a four-year degree as a chance to explore.

Though Hall excelled at Williams, his parents, who were farmers, considered his undergraduate years a bit erratic. He didn’t think he had the requirements for a pastor, but nonetheless enrolled in Union Theological Seminary in New York after graduation. The big city was intoxicating, and living there persuaded him to abandon his religious studies. After securing a loan, he set off for Germany to study philosophy, travel and visit the theaters, bars and dance halls of Berlin.

…

In the 1990s, Jeffrey Jenson Arnett, a psychology professor at the University of Missouri, interviewed young people around the country and determined that his subjects felt both grown up and not quite so grown up at exactly the same time. This led Dr. Arnett to conclude that the period between 18 and 25 was a distinct stage separate from both adolescence and young adulthood. In 2000, he published a paper defining this slice of life as “emerging adulthood,” a phrase that immediately entered the cultural lexicon, especially for parents trying to figure out why their children were struggling to launch into adulthood.develop

Read the whole story: The New York Times