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I got in one of those conversations yesterday – the kind which cause spirals into an abyss of self-doubt and images of your future self shaking an empty slurpee cup on the corner of 18th and Park pretending you won’t just spend your money on something that will make you stop remembering how far you fell.

Those don’t happen regularly to you? That’s weird.

This particular conversation stemmed from a whine here and there about summer class (oh, the only words that ever come out of my mouth anymore?) and about my friend’s fear of doing the work required to get into med school.

See there’s this weird balance we’ve got going.  We’re pursuing our dream jobs.  For her, that’s another 5 years of school from now.  For me, that’s getting below living wage for a while.  Every girl’s dream.  There was a moment when my friend hit her breaking point.  ”Let’s not.”  Let’s not have a conversation about how the job market terrifies us? Let’s not worry about how we’re going to make time to be social while we’re drowning in debt and MCAT study guides? Let’s not start picking out our spinster wears and search petfinder.com for our next relationship? Fine.  I recommend we instead get wasted and pretend we’re immune to life’s hardships. “Ah, the Greenwich Complex.”

We grew up in this town, and we’ve named our escapism tendencies after it.  It’s sort of the suburban utopia.  And there’s unspoken pressure to be a part of that world… you know, the one where successful people prance around and smile for the camera? That one. And we pranced around in diapers dreaming of the day when we’d do better than our parents did. Except doing as well as they have done seems increasingly … hard.

So we keep at our classes and hope our GPAs help.  We apply to grad schools (or everyone else does while I plan to hop on over to whatever city offers me something kind of, sort of close to what I want to do), we make goals, we remember networking every so often.  And occasionally, we buy a shot of tequila and a lotto ticket and hope it all feels better in the morning.  Cross your fingers, guys, this one feels like a winner.

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