The Four-Year Stigma

As seniors look forward to walking down the aisle during commencement ceremony, the fast approaching reality of graduation throws many students in a quandary, while graduates visit with family and friends and celebrate their benchmark achievement. Seniors stew in the knowledge that their so called “victory lap” may not be so victorious.
The number of awarded bachelor's degrees awarded from 1987 to 1997 rose by 18%. In the year 2003 the U.S. had 37.4 million citizens between the ages of 20 and 29. In the subsequent years these statistics have grown. The rise in number of these “twenty-somethings” with a college education has led to a phenomenon of depressed young adults that is commonly called “the quarterlife crisis,” a term applied to the period of life immediately following the major changes of adolescence into adulthood that causes feelings of depression, inadequacy and confusion of identity.
Many psychologists recognize QLC as a real problem among young people, and it is often compared to the mid-life crisis of adults 40 to 50. All these statistics can be found at quarterlifecrisis.com, a site dedicated to literature and statistics related to alleviating this problem.
Although QLC is usually found in college graduates, the issue is more commonly being found in all students nearing the end of their collegiate career. The general belief held by many Americans that adulthood begins at age 26 may further the problem.
The quarterlife crisis looming above our heads, the thousands more dollars of debt we will accrue in the following semesters trying to finish our degree plans, and the constant hassling of others over when and why we are not graduating on time. It would seem to be a grim outlook of life for my fifth year compatriots.
Though suffering from feelings of embarrassment or depression from our inability to finish our collegiate journey, we may take comfort in a report by The Education Trust put out in 2005. It shows UMHB’s six-year average graduation rate is only 41.2%.
This statistic may bring us encouragement. The simple fact that we are still in school and close to finishing, should spur us on to no longer furthering the statistics.
We are ahead of the curve. We must focus on the prize at hand by putting our nose to the grindstone and putting away our slacker-like ways. Together we can show the incoming freshmen not born in the 1980’s how it’s done.
If we focus on graduation in 2009, it will not only help keep our mind off of our busy senior schedule, with robing, midnight march and all the last experiences of our collegiate experience, it will also then be less likely for us to think ahead toward the great unknown of the future ahead.