Katie and I were sitting on the terrace of her Upper West Side Summer sublet eating peppercorn jack and talking about someone. I can’t put my finger on who exactly, which is likely due to the sheer number of times Katie and I have been doing that exact same thing in different locations with different cheeses (none of which will ever compare to the “dipping cheese” of Fall semester senior year).
The gist of it all was that this someone was doing some things that seemed strange or misguided or oddly timed for their life. Like living home when they could completely afford to live on their own or blowing money on a Summer share when they were in debt or going to business school even though they had no idea what they wanted out of it. They seemed to be going through motions that were counter intuitive to what would have actually been progress – or, progress to us.
Then Katie said something like, “right, but look at his friend group,” (so it must have been a guy…), “that’s just what they do.”
And I said, “There’s a blog post in that.”
When I was a senior in college there was this huge push of kids applying to post-grad volunteer programs like Americorp, JVC, Peace Corp and the like. It was pretty typical of Boston College, so we all saw it coming, but what surprised me were the number of kids who pursued four years of Finance and then had a huge change of heart 6 months prior to graduation. There was a culture of this alternative graduation plan, and that culture – those kids who always planned to pursue this path – became a point of reference for the rest of the crowd.
But when I tell my NYU friends that I had 12 friends who volunteered for a year after college they’re like whoa.
It’s one example of a large issue that’s an interesting part of 20-something (and probably all adult) life. Point of reference pressure.
It’s peer pressure – in the simplest sense – but of a totally different vein than the come-ooon!- everyone-is-going-out-on-mischief-night variety.
If all of your friends from high school move home after college and commute into Manhattan to save money, that’s your point of reference. It’s culturally acceptable if not flat-out expected. Break the mold, and you’re the one they talk about. If 75% of your graduating class from Ole Miss stays in Mississippi or nearby it after graduation that becomes what you assume you should to too. It’s what’s been tried and tested. You know just what it will look and feel like. And so not only does your brain go “this is the path I should follow because this is the path that I’m on” but it goes, “I know that…that’s comfortable…that makes sense.”There is nothing wrong with moving home after college or staying in Mississippi. But when gossiping on terraces about how one entire friend group all got married within five years of graduation we have to remember the operative word there (…it’s group).
It’s for this reason that I feel incredibly uncomfortable that I’ll never have a graduate degree but totally fine having not dated someone for more than 6 months in my recent adult life. Throw my story to the terrace of two other girls and they may have a very different opinion.
It’s natural to want to do what’s modeled for us – to follow the trend or wave or mob, and in many ways it pays off. Walking through life stages in lock-step with your closest peer group provides comfort, shared resources, and convenient conversation topics for future terrace talks. But what I’ve always wondered is how much the point of reference pressure guides a person versus how much the person points themselves inside their right reference. How many people in a different group at a different time would actually reach a better, fuller potential? We make decisions – where to go to college, what to study, where to life after – at an age where we can’t be trusted to rent a car and then let those guide us for much of the rest of our lives.
If college started at 30, if no one told each other where they were going our what they were doing after graduation, if you were forced to live in a different town than the one you grew up in – what would we all do differently? And how would we all turn out?
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YES! all questions i have asked myself! are you really the leader of your own path or that paths outcome? or is that inner dialogue in your head not really you but the product of the majority! i think about this sometimes as i look at my own life! for instance i find myself going through the motions here, i finished school, got a job and now im going to move out, and then eventually get married. its the way it goes for me. but then i wonder WHY is that the way it goes, if i wanted to just get on a plane and move to europe and go all hippy rogue why not? but that thought scares the shit out of me because its not what everyone else does. and that inner dialogue says “you silly girl, thats not the step your suppose to be taking right now dont you know the steps!?”. great post!!
What would we be doing up until 30?
I think there can be a lot of unintentional pressure as a result of what groups of friends decide to do in life. But what if you’ve got this a little backwards.
The assumption is that the friend group comes first, then we’re making decisions based on what’s become “normal” within our group. But, what if we choose like-minded or are attracted to similarly impassioned people as ourselves? In this scenario, you have passions, whether you express them or not, and are drawn to a group of people who either mirror who you are or who you want to be. In this case, then, when friends are choosing that year of service over finance, it’s not something you do because of pressure from outside of yourself, but something you come to the realization of because someone else has now brought it to your immediate attention.
I guess in other words, I haven’t made choices based on what other people have decided, and some of the things I’ve chosen to do in my life have been unpopular decisions among my friends. I don’t think I’m a special case. It just turns out that I was motivated by seeing my friends take chances, change jobs, lose their jobs, follow their dreams, go to grad school, etc. But instead of choosing the same thing as they did, I chose what looked like my version of “getting ahead.”
If you have progressive friends, people who are always changing and growing, it sucks to be the person who feels he is standing still. Wouldn’t that be an even worse terrace conversation to be the topic of?
Does that make sense?
I went to a college 5 years after graduating high school and outside of my hometown about 2000 miles away. I can tell you personally that waiting and moving to a different location really did change my projected path.
In high school all of my friends were going to Penn State and we were all going to be lawyers, biologists, doctors, etc. But when I went to college 5 years later, after blowing off a full ride, I didn’t go into pre-law where I had been accepted before… I decided I wanted to be a journalist and this was a great way to do it. I went to a small liberal arts college and avoided was an English major (I know right?!) only to find myself in politics after graduation.
ALL of my friends from college recently got married (while I was living in DC for the ultimate political experience) and by the time I got back, I was the only single one left.
The point is, that if I hadn’t waited or gone away, I may have been a lawyer… and not a very happy one. Do I think I would have been more inclined to be in a committed relationship by now had I not left? Definitely. Do I regret any of this, NO.
I know that without all these changes, I would have been who my friends are, succumbed to the pressure of Penn State, marriage, babies… but instead I am living a life I love the way I want to live it.
hypothesis validated?
I love this post! It is so so true. I am still ostracized by my hometown friends for not moving home and not frequenting the same 3 bars within a 3mile radius of my parents’ home. I went to school, joined a sorority (GASP!) rather than living in an apartment with my high school buddies and thus altered my path. My path is now one that led me away from my parents’ house and away from getting married before 25.
But I will say that the pressure didn’t stop at age 22…I worked in corporate America for 5 years and I cannot tell you how many of my colleagues drive the same BMW and build houses in the same subdivision. As humans, we crave community and belonging. The more of your actions that align with that community, the better you “fit.”
When I quit my job 4 months ago to take a huge risk, I felt like a total outcast- suddenly my place in my “community” was shrinking and now I don’t know where I “belong.” I love writing my own story in many ways…but this post REALLY made me think- how long until I have a new set of peers to reference? How long until I feel the need to trade in my car for the community uniform? Or will I continue to flit from group to group, rejecting convention but feeling a bit left out the whole time.
I always say that I was peer-pressured into many more AP and Honors classes than was actually necessary for me to take. My friends were all doing it, and I wanted to be in class with them, so I did it. It was that point-of-reference pressure.
My rebellion came in college and after when I took a much different path than my friends. I stayed somewhat close to home, pursued a major that I adored (that was sure to not make me any money…haha), and had no intention of being a doctor or a politician, like all my other brainiac friends. After college, I started immediately in a Masters program at age 21. Now I have a Masters degree in Counseling at 23 and know exactly what I want in my career.
BUT, my friends are all getting engaged (as it happened this weekend) and married, so I feel left out. I feel like, although I am on this wonderfully fulfilling career path, I’m not up to par with the rest of them because I don’t have a ring on my finger. I’ve spent the past 6 years rebelling against this point-of-reference pressure in education and career, only to find it sneaking up on me in relationships once again.
I feel lucky… my friends are all doing so many different things! Some are, like me, at uni and working part-time. Some are working full-time. Some still live at home, some have moved out. Some are engaged, admittedly not those that I’m close to. One is married with a kid (not in that order) but again, this is just someone I knew at school, I haven’t actually spoken to her since graduation.
One of my friends dropped out of uni to work full-time, another isn’t working at all because he’s struggling with uni, my boyfriend WISHES he had time to do some sort of class. My “group” is so diverse, it’s really good.