I turn 24 today. Happy birthday to me?

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I turn 24 today! Before you ask me if I feel any older, I don’t. However, since this time last year I was wrapping things up at Kenyon College, I do feel like (more of) a grownup.

I took off from school to work on campaigns, so 23 was my first year of adulthood. As I learned the hard way, your first year out of college is a lot like your first year in college, but with worse hangovers and fewer naps. Once again, you’re in a new place that everyone around you is more familiar with. There are new social norms to follow and new social networks to build. And no one cares about your senior project.

But seeing as I’m turning 24 in 2015, my experience as a first-year adult has been vastly different from what it would have been in 2005 or even 2010.

(I should pause here to make the necessary qualification that my experience is that of a white, male, non-first generation college graduate. Some of my experience is generalizable beyond those dimensions, but much of it isn’t. This might also be a good place to point out that my age groups is — with pros and cons — more sensitive to generalized statements than our elders.)

The most striking difference is in how mobile I am, both geographically and professionally. I’m currently transitioning out of my first job, which I’ve held for less than a year, to write full time — a job I can do from anywhere on the planet that has an Internet connection. My experience matches up with data showing that people my age — I’m not going to use the M word — are staying in their jobs for about half as long as our older counterparts, and that 91 percent of workers around my age expect to stay in their current job for less than three years.

The cost of finding a new job is lower than it used to be, as LinkedIn, et al has made it easier to apply. In response, employers have made themselves more attractive, but part of being attractive is, ironically, making it easy for your employees to leave. In breaking with corporate tradition, my current day job offers flexible hours, unlimited vacation time and — the real kicker — a one-year hill on your stock options as opposed to a four-year cliff (rather than fully vesting after four years, you quarter-vest after one year and then 1/48th-vest every month after that). They’re still “golden handcuffs,” but they aren’t as tight because a four year tenure simply isn’t a realistic expectation for an employer to set in the industry I work in.

23 year-old me in the private sector.

Don’t worry, though. Things aren’t all bad for The Man. Employee flexibility and mobility are great ways for businesses to save on costs associated with longer-term employees in a traditional 9-5 gig. After all, if no one’s staying around for more than four years, why bother with a retirement plan? More workers than ever are even more mobile than myself, piecing together any number of side jobs in the “sharing economy,” and what they gain in freedom (if you can call it that) they lose in instability. This trend isn’t new, but it is more pronounced.

However, workers aren’t more mobile today just because the incentives are structured differently. The preferences are, as well. The current crop of recent college grads is fiercely, clinically competitive. Kids like me have been told that we’re above average since we were in kindergarten, and have been told that everyone (but ourselves in particular) is special since we were two. Now we have to square those cultural axioms with the fact that the adult world doesn’t inflate its grades. Combine that with the fact that we see the best version of our friends’ lives on Facebook — every promotion, every successful project, every 15 minutes of fame — and you wind up with a generation of workers who are always looking for something better, or at least different. Our insistence on (as opposed to preference for) self-actualization, amplified by our interconnectedness, fuels our intrinsic and extrinsic desire to succeed.

24th Birthday, via Shutterstock

So some of us climb, or at least move laterally so that it looks like we’re climbing. Some of us work odd jobs abroad to fund our travel; many teach English. Some of us take a chance on a business venture that doesn’t pan out. Some of us bounce around because we have no idea what we really want to do with our lives, and many of us eventually go back to graduate school. The point is that fewer of us start our careers straight out of college; we just get jobs. This has always been true to a certain extent, but it’s more true now than it used to be.

This may all sound rather depressing, but as someone who’s a part of this as much as an observer, it isn’t. It’s just different, a natural extension of all of the things that make 2015 a great year to be alive. The advances that amplify my angst are the same advances that make it possible for me to tweet to an activist in Baltimore, or to navigate the streets of Panama City without a guide. 23 was a blast, and 24 looks to be even better. I can pay my bills and write at the same time, which is hard to beat, but if that ever changes I can get another great job. And then another, and another after that.

In any case, here’s to being 24 in 2015. And do forgive me if there aren’t as many new posts on the site tomorrow. If my friends have their way, I’ll be nursing a nasty hangover in the morning.

from AMERICAblog News http://ift.tt/1ImKvcn