Today I have a reader contribution on “What She Knows Now” . Enjoy!
Dear 20-something,
Your 20s are super fun. You graduated from college, you have a paycheck, you live in a fun city with lots of bars and restaurants, you are with all of your friends, and you love to to be adored.
Paris, Britney, Kim, they all prance around without underwear and they get fame, fortune, and rotate the # 1 searched person on the web spot everyday. You, on there other hand, will probably have to work and have a real job. You will probably get married and have some children. You will probably have a really good life. You will also probably regret the digital images and video of you prancing around in short skirts and no underwear that were sent around to people you know, people they know, and so on. There is nothing to be gained by letting the world see up your skirt.
You will probably live until you are 100 years old. That means that you have a lot of life ahead of you. So far you have lived your life in 2-4-year chunks – high school, college, work, more school, etc. You will make life decisions, but your perspective is a bit warped because “a long time” for you is 4 years.
Good things, maybe even the best things, take a long time to cultivate. Invest in yourself. Do a few things in your 20s that you know will not have an immediate pay-off. Learn how to cook, sew, sing, dance, or sail and be a master at it! Invest in something other than a vacation or a fancy dress. If all you do is work, party, vacation on a beach and shop you will become a dreadfully boring person not only to everyone around you, but most importantly to yourself.
You are going to ask other people for advice. They will give it to you. You will ask people you trust to tell you what to do. They will. The problem is that all these people may not always have your best interests at heart. Yes, even the people you love and trust, but not because they want you to fail. You will get bad advice or irrelevant advice because we’re all human, but unique. We can only answer questions based on our own unique experiences. What works for me may not work for you.
Take it all with a grain of salt and on that note…go live your life and have a great time! But don’t forget to wear underwear.
About the author…
Hannah Park is a New York transplant in San Francisco who has probably made every mistake possible, exhaustively switched careers and coasts multiple times, and now eagerly embraces every experience as an opportunity to laugh. From 9-5 she can be found at UCSF in the Global Health Sciences Department.
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Thank you Hannah! I love this perspective. Women today have made so many different choices! Like Hannah, what we have in common by the time we hit our forties is that we finally are making decisions that are right for ourselves. Hopefully by passing on different perspectives on what we have learned from out decisions…you can get a head start on figuring out what works for you.