When I'm 25

A few weeks ago, I turned 25. Unlike most of my friends who turned 25 this year, initially I didn’t find anything particularly monumental about it. Being able to rent a car, when I live in NYC, hardly seemed worthy of a major celebration. It’s turning 30 that’s had most of my attention… it’s the big benchmark on the horizon. But, the other day, I started thinking about being a kid, remembering all of the times we had to write essays on where we thought we’d be when we’re 25. “When I’m 25.” Wow. As a kid, this seemed so old. It seemed like at 25, I’d be a grown-up.

When I was little, I thought I’d be married, with kids. I thought I’d have a house and a dog – finally! My sister was allergic, so we couldn’t get one. I remembered thinking, that’s my top priority! Get a dog! Mom and Dad won’t be able to stop you! A fluffy loving golden retriever. I remembered thinking I’d be very responsible and very serious. I remembered thinking that I’d be someplace shiny and big, a friendly house and neighbors. I remembered wanting my childhood friends to live next door and for our kids to play together in the backyard, maybe we’d have a fort, something cooler than the simple swing-set my sister and I had to play on.

When I was in high school, I thought 25 sounded boring. All my attention was on college. In high school, I felt like I was at a crossroads, after a socially stigmatizing middle school experience filled with ridicule and isolation, I had become less the wallflower, as band drum major and student body vice president. Not popular, but not unpopular either. College was my chance for reinvention. 25 seemed like a benchmark beyond the finish line at the end of college, where I’d take a victory lap and everyone would applaud. 25 wasn’t as enamoring as my idealistic vision of my childhood years, and not as immanent as it would appear to be in college. 25 was just… 25. Who cared?

In college, 25 appeared as a finish line in a different way. My future focus in college was all about law school. If I started when I turned 22, I would graduate a few months before turning 25. At 25 I thought I’d be a lawyer, with a great offer in a firm in Washington DC, a working professional perhaps engaged to a classmate. I’d be working on international law, something I was extremely interested in during my undergraduate college years. I remember feeling like it’s not that far away. I remembered thinking a house and kids were the last thing on my mind. I remember vividly not wanting to return to Florida. So when an international issue tugged at my heartstrings and I abandoned the law school plan for an internship in Italy, the plan changed. It was the first time in my life that I didn’t know where I’d be at 25. It was also the first time I didn’t really care.

In grad school, 25 was just a few laps away. Running through a matrix of awkward social functions, jilted classmates stressed about policy memos and STATA outputs, 25 again became a dream. At 25, I started to think, I’ll be out of here! It became a benchmark for freedom from the tiresome world of graduate studies, where spring break isn’t a break, summer break is internship season, and even Christmas “you ought to be working on your master’s project.” Reading for fun became a guilty indulgence, one I finally gave up for a couple years. Everything swarmed around “the future” and “networking” and “job opportunities.” In the sinking economic climate, the year 25 seemed like salvation. By then, I thought, things will work out.

So where am I now? In the most basic descriptive sense, I’m exactly where I want to be. I’m a Partnerships Manager for the United Nations World Food Programme, working with people I respect and adore, on the issue of hunger, which is my passion. I’m living with the boy who in high school was my unattainable dream. I live near my sister and my parents visit often enough. Once the social outcast, I am deeply grateful for the exceptional friends I have in my life, some who have been there every step of the way since high school, some who I share the bond of college or sorority life with, and some who are co-grad-school survivors or travel companions.

In a more meaningful sense, I am incredibly happy. Somewhere in between childhood and high school and college and grad school I discovered things that I love and am passionate about. Reading, writing, taking photos for fun, traveling, Africa have become passions and pleasures. I’m studying French despite my anxiety in speaking new languages (I love to read them). I collect art from all over the world. I have broken away from stereotypes and expectations that going to college in southern Florida I felt trapped me. I still plan, everything, from wedding weekends and reunions to my carefully regimented after-work routine of the gym, errands, a snack, dinner, and select TV shows (Glee). I’m not married in the perfect house with the golden retriever, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that lifestyle, but I’m exactly where I want to be, and that’s important. I’m also not too serious, I’m somewhat responsible, but I’m more spontaneous than I ever thought I’d be. Adventures that used to scare me now thrill me. My life has a lot of love and meaning in it. That’s where I am, at 25.