Life in your twenties is filled with a variety of emotions and experiences due to the fact that this is when adulthood truly comes into play. But the thing is, we don’t actually know how to be an adult until we do adult things. But the other thing is, we tend to go into our twenties with certain expectations, yet we come to realize that reality doesn’t quite match up to our expectations.

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Career

Expectation: Getting your dream job off the bat and being super happy about it.

Reality: Realizing that searching for a job is like trying to find your way out of a corn maze; you confidently walk in, then get excited when you turn a corner and see an opening, then you come to find that there’s actually more corn in your path, so you’re stuck. (Yeah, I know, it’s a great visual representation)

How to deal with the reality: It’s tough, but you have to keep trying. You can’t give up that soon because who wants to be stranded in the middle of a corn maze? Keep on keeping on and things will fall into place eventually. You might have to start with a job you don’t like, but by enduring a bad job, you’ll be able to build up your skills for your dream job.

Social Life

Expectation: You feel like you’re still young enough to party whenever you want just like you did in college.

Reality: It’s somewhat socially unacceptable for a twenty-something to party as much as a college student, plus your alcohol tolerance is slowly but surely getting lower.

How to deal with the reality: This doesn’t mean that you can’t party at all, you just need to tone it down a bit and act more mature. You’ll also come to find that there are so many other fun things you can do with your friends that don’t involve getting wasted every weekend. Go be an adult socialite!

Health

Expectation: You’re an adult now, so no one can tell you what not to eat.

Reality: You realize how important your health is and you realize that you should probably do something about it.

How to deal with the reality: It’s honestly not that hard to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Eat more fruits and vegetables and workout more. It doesn’t have to be this huge burden that takes over your life; just slowly incorporate healthiness into your life and it will soon stick with you. Go be a healthy adult!

Relationships

Expectation: Since you’re in your twenties, you automatically need to find the person that you’re going to marry; time is running out!

Reality: It’s still okay to casually date people in your twenties.

How to deal with the reality: Don’t worry so much about finding the person you’re going to marry! It’s perfectly okay to go out on dates with people in order to figure out what type of person you want in your life. You’re still young, whether you believe it or not, which means you have plenty of time to find your husband/wife. If you happen to find that person in your twenties, more power to you! But it’s okay if you don’t!

Friendships

Expectation: You’ll continue being friends with everyone you met in college and it’ll be great!

Reality: You will not be able to maintain every single friendship that you have made in college/in life in general.

How to deal with the reality: You have to realize that each friend you make won’t be a friend for life. You will have some amazing and special people who will definitely be in your life forever, but that can’t always be everyone. People get busy and move on with their lives, because that’s what happens when you get older. Appreciate the friends that have stuck with you and be open to new friendships, because you can definitely make new friends no matter how old you are!