Learning how to adult...




Vanessa Otero graduated from high school way back in the last century (1999). She was in my first-period AP Language and Composition class where she stood out for her sense of humor, levelheadedness, and analytical insight.

Her post is about “adulting” and one of the things she talks about is taking advice from the right people. My first thought here is that Vanessa would be a really good person from whom to take advice. Why? Because in twenty year’s time Vanessa has chalked up a lot of life experience.

Vanessa graduated from UCLA, where she earned a degree in English. Since then she has changed direction a number of times. Early on she thought she wanted to go to med school, but instead jumped into the world of sales (pharmaceuticals, real estate seminars) where she worked for several years. She then started taking law school classes at night (University of Denver) and eventually pulled off something that few have the temerity to do: a complete career switch. She is now a patent attorney in Boulder where she lives with her wife.

But that’s not all. Vanessa’s life took a new turn in 2016. Interested in the way that political bias affects different media outlets, she started a side project called the “Media Bias Chart.” She did a bunch of research and produced this cool looking chart that she sent around to her friends (check it out). Then, suddenly, it went viral -- and started to show up everywhere. I saw it on my Facebook feed long before I knew its source! In 2018 Vanessa started her own company around the Media Bias Chart, which she now runs in her spare time.

That’s a lot. When someone with that kind of life experience wants to give some advice, I stop and listen. Here, she offers her thoughts on how young people might better prepare themselves for the adult world that awaits them. “This post is just some straight-up direct and practical advice,” she said.  “Since it's just over 650 words, and I wanted to give you two pieces of advice, direct was the way to go.”

- C.H.





If you’ve seen certain shirts and memes, you may have gathered that some young (and even older) adults find that sometimes they just can’t. Whatever the phrase (“can’t adult today,” “adulting is hard,”), it conveys the idea that meeting the responsibilities and expectations of modern adulthood is difficult, and that is true. To have your stuff together in multiple areas of life—including relationships, health and fitness, career success, happiness, and finances, among others—is a tall order.

It’s very much like trying to succeed with all the things you are trying to balance while in school. No one has everything perfect and figured out all the time, and that is ok, but these are the major areas in which we all strive to succeed and improve.

What’s also true is that getting good at meeting these adult responsibilities and expectations is not just a function of age—you don’t automatically get good at adulting simply by getting older. In fact, you can go your whole life without getting your stuff together in one or more of the above-mentioned areas. You have to actively figure out how to get good at adulting, and high school is a great time to start.

I have two main pieces of advice. The first is to structure your own learning about these areas both during and after you leave formal schooling. The second is to take advice only from people you want to emulate.

On structuring your own learning: You may have heard that it is generally a good idea to “always be learning,” but after you leave a school setting which puts things to learn in front of you, day in and day out, what you learn from then on is a function of what you choose to put in your brain yourself. Note that none of the above-mentioned areas (relationships, health and fitness, career success, happiness, and finances) are necessarily taught as subjects in school. You learn how to be an adult both while you are in school and once you leave, but no one puts these subjects in front of you. Those first four years or so out of school, that learning curve is a bit steep.

Make a habit out of reading books, listening to podcasts, and taking seminars about these adulting subjects. They are out there, and they teach you stuff, just as surely as you learn biology or Spanish. While you are in high school, college, grad school, or professional school, you may not have a ton of time to spend reading books about personal finances or healthy relationships. But think about what you put into your brain when you have the choice of what content to consume. Do you consume mostly TV, video games, music, social media, and movie content? This is entertainment content. There’s nothing wrong with entertainment, but it’s different from learning content and takes up your time. When you are done with school and into your job or career, you will have even more choice of how to spend your time and what kind of content you consume. Make sure some of it is learning content rather than entertainment content.

On taking advice only from those you want to emulate: I mean this very specifically. If you are going to take advice on someone on a particular subject, make sure they have what you want in that area of life. Take fitness advice only from people who are fit in the way you want to be. Take happiness advice from people who are as happy as you want to be. Take money advice from people who are as financially successful as you want to be. Take career advice from someone whose career you want. Take relationship advice from people whose relationships you admire.

Practice this now. I am giving you advice. Should you listen to me? Depends. You probably don’t know me, so you should probably at least check out my LinkedIn or Facebook profile or ask your older Parker teachers if I’m someone whose advice you should listen to.

Both of these pieces of advice are versions of the idea that you should pay attention to what you put into your brain and what you allow to influence you. Lots of content competes for your attention, and lots of people have advice to give you. The better the input, the better the output.

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