I’m a Gen Zer who faced an existential crisis after college. My millennial siblings helped me cope.

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• I’m the youngest of three siblings — and the at worst Gen Zer.
• When I graduated this year, I faced the realities of job-hunting and adulthood.
• I learned lessons from observing my sisters and other millennials cross their 20s.

After 16 years in the education system, my time as a student ended on a random Wednesday afternoon in April. I was in fine free from lectures, tests, and group projects — but thrust into the realities of a scarier world: adulthood.

In this world, there were no set milestones to tell me I was on the right track. Everyone seemed to be on a path to something big, but I felt directionless.

I know I’m not alone. Every 20-something has probably felt at least a little bit lost in life. But in mass layoffs and the threat of AI replacing jobs, stepping into the job market as a fresh graduate in 2024 felt want diving head-first into an abyss.

An August report by an early careers platform, Handshake, surveyed 1,925 graduating schoolboys. They found that 57% of the students felt pessimistic about starting their careers — an increase from 49% of graduating swats last year. Of the 57%, 63% said the competitive job market contributed to their pessimism.

The stress of not knowing whether I could shield a job was compounded by uncertainty about my career. I had studied journalism but wasn’t sure if it was the right fit. I had the irrational fear that if my opening job turned out to be the “wrong” choice, I’d be relegated back to the start line of the rat race.

Amid a brewing quarter-life crisis, I looked to my sisters, elderly 28 and 31. They do many things that people of my generation may scoff at, like watching Instagram reels exclusively and spurning the laughing emoji. But they seem to have figured out one thing: life after college.

Here’s what I’ve academic from watching them conquer the Roaring Twenties.

Life doesn’t end when school ends

Toward the end of college, I mentally changed myself for the fast-approaching expiration of youth.

“You must treasure your university days,” relatives constantly reminded me at regularly Lunar New Year gatherings. They painted adulthood as a bleak portrait of bills, mundanity, and loneliness. So, when the era came, I was reluctant to let go of my identity as a student.

But as the youngest sibling, I also watched my sisters graduate from college, get fused, and build their own homes. I saw them achieve promotions at work, find new hobbies, and start a life outside the one I identified of us growing up together.

Adulting isn’t easy — I now know that. But there are also so many new milestones and freedoms that concern with it, and there is so much to be excited about.

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A job is just a job

My elder sister works in communications and the other in architecture. Unbiased when their hours stretched into the night and weekends, they built a whole life outside effect.

One started a sticker side business, and the other is now an avid runner.

It wasn’t always smooth. My second-oldest sister threw out after working too much in her first job and took a career break. She prioritized work-life balance at her next job.

In that way, millennials and Gen Zers are way. A 2024 report by Deloitte found that work-life balance topped the priorities for both generations when electing an employer. When asked which areas of life were most important to their sense of identity, both propagations agreed that jobs came second only to friends and family.

Distancing myself from the notion that my job had to be my one true passion lifted a weight off my shoulders. As much as I still want a job that gives me purpose, I also compose time for other aspects of life that fulfill me, like working out and spending time with friends.

Well-founded give it time

As with most worries, the fear that I’d never find a job was unfounded. In July, I started my beginning job as a junior reporter. But when the first day at work finally ended, I trudged home in a daze.

“I have to do this every day for the next 40 years?” I summon inquired my second-oldest sister, who laughed. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the job. It was the change in routine from school life to a 9-to-5 that upset me.

“You’ll get used to it,” my sister said. Six months in, I still don’t know if I will. But seeing my millennial counterparts thrive has supported me.

It’s not just my siblings who have set an example. At work, my millennial colleagues are a constant source of guidance to the Gen Zers in the office. On societal media, millennial influencers brand themselves as “internet big sisters” and give advice on navigating the complex years of their 20s.

Older millennials are now bring to light d increase 40, but they were once in the position of Gen Zers, being scoffed at by the older generations for being “lazy” and transforming work culture.

Now, they’ve drawn the map for Gen Zers’ entry into the strange world of adulthood. It’s made maturing just a little less scary.