2008 Woodie Awards
The Quarter Life Crisis
Jamie Malernee
Issue date: 10/23/06 Section: Holt News
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He thought he knew what he wanted to do with his life.
So Jamie Deitchman spent nearly four years and $30,000 to get a bachelor's degree in electronics engineering.
After school, he was hired to do tech support and congratulated himself on becoming an adult. There was just one problem.
"I hated waking up in the morning," said Jamie, 28, of Coconut Creek, Fla. "In tech support, anyone who calls you has a problem and it's your fault. You spent the whole day talking to people having a bad day, and so you start having a bad day. I was miserable."
His sister, Heather Deitchman, of Royal Palm Beach, Fla., was having her own career meltdown. She graduated college with good grades and a bachelor's degree in marketing but could not find an opening in her field and had to take a retail job at the mall.
"I had to move back in with my parents," Heather, now 25, recalled. "I was making $14,000 a year with a degree from a private university. I felt like I'd done all that work for nothing."
Neither imagined finding the right career would be such a problem. But career confusion and frustration are growing sentiments among 20-somethings _ so much so that an entire crop of "Quarterlife Crisis" books have appeared in bookstores, offering life and job advice.
A recent study on aging and job satisfaction shows that young workers, ages 18 to 34, are more "extremely dissatisfied" with their jobs than any other age group, with nearly half feeling burned out and one in four seeking an entirely new career.
Robert Morison, co-author of the 7,700-person survey and executive vice president of the Texas-based business management Concours Group, says today's 20-somethings have unusually high expectations because of the way they grew up: during a time of economic prosperity, seeing young adults making easy fortunes during the tech bubble of the 1990s.
Since then, the bubble has burst, job and salary growth has slowed and positions have moved overseas.
So Jamie Deitchman spent nearly four years and $30,000 to get a bachelor's degree in electronics engineering.
After school, he was hired to do tech support and congratulated himself on becoming an adult. There was just one problem.
"I hated waking up in the morning," said Jamie, 28, of Coconut Creek, Fla. "In tech support, anyone who calls you has a problem and it's your fault. You spent the whole day talking to people having a bad day, and so you start having a bad day. I was miserable."
His sister, Heather Deitchman, of Royal Palm Beach, Fla., was having her own career meltdown. She graduated college with good grades and a bachelor's degree in marketing but could not find an opening in her field and had to take a retail job at the mall.
"I had to move back in with my parents," Heather, now 25, recalled. "I was making $14,000 a year with a degree from a private university. I felt like I'd done all that work for nothing."
Neither imagined finding the right career would be such a problem. But career confusion and frustration are growing sentiments among 20-somethings _ so much so that an entire crop of "Quarterlife Crisis" books have appeared in bookstores, offering life and job advice.
A recent study on aging and job satisfaction shows that young workers, ages 18 to 34, are more "extremely dissatisfied" with their jobs than any other age group, with nearly half feeling burned out and one in four seeking an entirely new career.
Robert Morison, co-author of the 7,700-person survey and executive vice president of the Texas-based business management Concours Group, says today's 20-somethings have unusually high expectations because of the way they grew up: during a time of economic prosperity, seeing young adults making easy fortunes during the tech bubble of the 1990s.
Since then, the bubble has burst, job and salary growth has slowed and positions have moved overseas.
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