‘So, what are your plans?’ isn’t always helpful. — It’s been a couple years since I was a college student, and even then, my own chaotic time in college is one reason I’ve written frequently about the myth of the “college experience” being the “best four years of your life.” But my personal chaos was nothing compared to what…

The more we care what others think of us, the harder it is to know ourselves. But self-compassion can help. — Depending on who you listen to, I’m a “try-hard,” an imposter, no fun at parties, and could be improving at, well, just about everything, from the way I dress, to the job I do, to wrangling my eyebrows. All of these are things that have been said about me or…

How do we untether ourselves from the people we imagined we’d become? — Growing out of things is spun as a given: Old clothes that no longer fit or feel like you, jobs or schools, phases of life, living situations, habits. …

What happens when “just take care of yourself” starts to sound a lot like “pull yourself up by your bootstraps”? — I think it was the suggestion that I join an after-work mental health workshop that involved a quiz at the end. Or maybe it was the earnest pitch offering a desktop extension to make my laptop “cozier,” whatever that means. I’m not sure exactly which moment was the tipping point…

Here’s what to do with that late-pandemic impulse to make a big change — Blowing up your life has always seemed like a romantic idea — shrugging off all the things that were weighing you down, wiping your slate clean, actually doing the thing you always kept tucked in the back of your mind. Trying your hand at a job in a totally different…

Maybe we can’t fix perfectionism ourselves. It was the drumbeat of my life, growing up: When I overdid my homework and rewrote notes until my penmanship was perfect, when I practiced pirouettes in the ballet studio until my calves started giving out, when I people-pleased to the point where it…

“I was a person before I was a mother, before I was a teen mother, before I was the pregnant girl.” — The last time I spoke to Nicole Lynn Lewis, founder of Generation Hope, she told me that student parents, especially those who are teenagers, are a “largely invisible population.” Despite being at the epicenter of intersecting issues, including systemic racism, poverty, classism, and basic needs insecurity, young adults who are…

What does it mean to plan out our lives in unplannable circumstances? — The last time someone asked me about my five-year plan, I was in an office with too few windows, interviewing for a job that listed one set of responsibilities in the description and a different set in the interviews. …

At fifteen, I was staring down losing a career that I’d committed my short life to chasing, choosing ballet barres and bloody blisters across my toes over boys and benchmarks of a high school life well-lived. …