TEA= Transitioning early adults. The adulting blog that doesn’t pretend to know the answers, but is trying to find them.
What I Really Learned In Grad School: Quarter 1
What I Really Learned in Grad School: Quarter One Obviously, it’s been a minute since my last post. If you are wondering what the hell happened to me these last 2.5 months, the answer is very simple: grad school. The quarter system, having 10 weeks of class, 15 hours a week, was far more intense…
Vote!
Today is national voter registration day, and the election is 42 days away. While I’m sure you are getting inundated with information on voter registration, I want to reinforce this. The right to vote is something that I am super passionate about; arguably, it is one of my largest passions. Why do I, or why…
Imposter Syndrome, Part II
For the past 5 days, my head has absolutely been spinning. It was five days ago that I started orientation for my grad program; that I stepped foot on campus and realized, Oh crap, what have I gotten myself into? Meeting and chatting with my future classmates, I realized how excited I was to be…
Patience- A Real Virtue
On a fresh, fall like morning, I walked up to the front door (of a house that isn’t mine) after a run, feeling refreshed and exhilarated. This is going to be a GREAT day, I thought to myself. Upon walking into the house, I saw a suspicious brown substance on the carpet. Dog poop. Just…
Balancing Compassion and Empathy
There’s a common adage that you are your own best friend and your own worst enemy. For me, I’m constantly struggling balancing being critical of myself while allso advocating for my self, because, at the end of the day, I know that I am my own biggest asset. Even so, I have trouble treating myself…
Living Alone Without Being Lonely
For my entire life, I’ve been a big proponent of alone time. When filling out my rooming preferences for my freshman year of college, I actually requested a single. If I was going to be surrounded by a lot of people all the time, I was going to NEED my own space. While on a…
Defining your (COVID) Relationships
The summer seems to be flying by this year, and I continue to attribute that to lack of variety in my activities. My days pass by as I work from home, workout, go to the pool to tan, cook dinner, and go to bed early. Every once in a while, I see friends. Usually, I…
Handling Transitions
2020 has brought us a lot of things, but for me and a good amount of my friends, it is bringing us to transitions in lifestyles and careers. Whether you are moving to a new apartment, changing jobs, shifting into going back to school, ending a relationship, starting one, and more, transitions are extremely hard…
Fear- Full
Staring down at the ocean from the beautiful Sunset Cliffs in San Diego, I watch my friends jump off the cliffs into the ocean. Meanwhile, my legs pull back to safer ground, trembling. My friends inquire as to why I won’t jump off with them. I stare blankly, and stammer some kind of reply like…
Unpack your “normal”
You may have noticed, you may have not- I haven’t been posting on this blog for a couple of weeks. The reason? I want to be in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. I have become increasingly aware that my role was not to be making posts and speaking from my experience, but to…
#BlackLivesMatter: A Resource Roundup
Happy Monday all. If you’re anything like me, your head is spinning right now at everything going on in our country. Admittedly, I haven’t been super comfortable talking about it, because I want to make sure that when I do, I use the right words. I want to make sure that I am an ally…
My Open Letter to 2020 Grads
Yesterday, I spent an embarrassing amount of time on my phone. Which, frankly, has been the case most days during quarantine. What prompted my rampant scrolling and reminiscing yesterday was my alma mater’s. University of San Diego, graduation day. My feeds were flooded with pictures of people posing in front of campuses’ most known buildings…
Practicing Gratitude
It’s no big secret that I am a nerd. To solidify my nerd status, I enrolled in an enrichment class last fall called “The Nature of Happiness”. We discussed different philosophers, how they proposed reaching happiness, along with some psychologists theories as well. As part of the class, we took a test to find out…
How to Run 101
Happy Monday everybody! As I have mentioned before, one of the more productive things I have done during this quarantine time is to start running again. Back in college, I ran 3-4 times a week, and even did two half marathons (I know, I can’t really believe it either). Moving back to Colorado from San…
How to Overcome Fears of the Future
Laying awake at night, I can’t stop thinking about what the world will look like in 6 months, and what this means for me. Will I be starting graduate school virtually? When will I be able to go back to my favorite breweries with my friends? Will I ever be able to meet people and…
Drinking From Home
Drinking from home has become just as essential as working from home these last few months. One of my favorite things to do, quarantine or real life, is to explore different alcoholic beverages. From craft beer to cocktails, I love to mix it up when in the kitchen with different drinks. For anyone looking for…
The Dangers of Nostalgia
Living at my parents’ house for the past 5 weeks has been equally lovely and triggering in its own ways. At first, being back here for a long period of time signaled to my brain that I must be going through some kind of life transition (i.e. home for the summer between different years of…
Turning 24 in Quarantine
This past weekend, we celebrated two of my favorite holidays: Easter, and my birthday. Every year, I never know what exactly to expect from my birthday. Growing up, I had a snow day on my birthday at least once. I’ve had one surprise birthday party thrown, and thrown many parties of my own. As is…
A New Series: Finding your Dream Job
Over the past few weeks the country, and world, is struggling with a high amount of layoffs. While this is a horrible time to be laid off due to the uncertainty of the COVID-19 situation, this is also an opportunity to reevaluate your career path. When I have ventured into the scary world of job…
Boundary Setting
Happy Monday (or whenever you are reading this)! These past couple of weeks, I have been quarantining with my parents; and with that, comes a lot of change for me. Waking up to hearing a dog barking, sharing a TV with two other people, and coordinating schedules are all new things to me. For those…
What I made this week- Week of March 30th – AKA week 3 of Coronavirus quarantine
This week I decided to get a bit fancy with my meals. My boyfriends and I went to the grocery store when all this coronavirus craziness began and there was NOTHING, not even bread. So for the first two weeks of quarantines we were living off of frozen pizza and mac and cheese. But…
Mastering the art of basic cooking
Hello everyone. I hope everyone is staying safe and practicing social distancing. I would like to take a break from all the Coronavirus talk and write about one of my favorite hobbies: Cooking! If you’re reading this thinking, “I hate cooking,” there is NO BETTER time than now to master this super easy craft. Here…
How I’m Staying Healthy
As we are entering our third (or second? I don’t look at calendars anymore) week of quarantine/ social isolation, I am starting to lose some of the motivation I had at the beginning. The more time we spend in isolation, the more time it seems to be extended, and I’m sometimes having trouble seeing the…
Selfish or Self Care?
This past week, I’ve really been struggling with what it means to be “selfish”. Working from home, I am loving distance from my coworkers, the hustle and bustle of the courthouse, and, quite frankly, the clients. Guilt begins to set in when I think about how I am enjoying my time at home while others…
Making the best of your “quarantime”
There’s no need to point out the obvious; what we are going through as a collective society the last couple weeks is unprecedented. I don’t want to rehash the details, because frankly, the more people talk about it, the more anxious I become. Given my predisposition to anxiety (aka generalized anxiety disorder) and the world…
What Spirituality Means to Me
When asked to describe my life during my schooling years in one word, I would probably say “sheltered”. As many of you may know, or may have picked up on by reading my posts, I am a practicing Catholic, and have attended Catholic schools my whole life. Naturally, many friends and colleagues of mine were…
Mother Knows Best
On the heels of Bachelor Peter’s announcement that he WILL NOT be pursuing a relationship with Madison I would like to continue my rant on The Bachelor’s two night season finale. Let’s talk about Barb: the overbearing, emotional mother America hates right now. Barb spent a good portion of Tuesday night’s episode roasting Peter (her…
Why I don’t believe “love can conquer all”
Last night in Part 1 of the season finale of the bachelor, front-runner Madison Prewett left the show after a dramatic back-and-forth with bachelor, Peter Weber. The couple was fighting about the fact that Weber had slept with the other two women left on the show, as this went against Prewett’s religious beliefs. Weber was…
Plans vs. Goals
When I was in high school, I had a plan for my future. When people would ask me what I wanted to do for my career or study in college, I would give an almost robotic answer, that would go something like this: I will study psychology, preferably at a school that has a sports…
These are a few of my favorite things!
I turn 24 next Saturday y’all!!! I’m officially in my mid-20s! In light of that, I would love to share with you 24 of my favorite things in the world. From books and podcasts to make-up and jeans, these are the 24 things that make me, me! (Obviously, this post is not sponsored by any…
Speak Your Needs
Talking is easy; communication is hard. Shockingly, at one point in my life, I was shy. Meeting new people as a small child, I would cower behind my mother’s legs, speak in a quavering voice if someone asked me a simple question, such as: “What is your name?”. Overcoming my shyness was a long and…
Parenting your parents
Do your parents call your grandparents by their first names? My dad has called his dad “Ray” for my whole life. When did that start? And will I ever call my parents Jeff and Berny? That possibility always seemed unlikely, up until about 10 months ago. 10 months ago my parents went through a pretty…
Sex, Religion, and The Bachelor
Attending Catholic school as a young child makes my first memories of learning about sex, well….awkward. To this day, I will always remember our seventh grade religion teacher, who was a very old and slightly obease nun, and how she chose to teach our sex lesson. Each student was given a certain scenario that we…
All the single shaming, all the single shaming (now put your hands up!)
“Got any plans tonight?” coworkers asked on Friday (which, in case you were not aware, was Valentine’s Day), with raised eyebrows. I shyly responded no, that I would be heading up to the mountains with my parents, and had to face their looks of apparent disappointment. “Single shaming” is a real phenomenon for those of…
Overcoming the Imposture Syndrome
The first time I ever (legally) bought alcohol was a week after I got home from studying abroad in Italy. In Italy, 12-year-olds can drink fairly openly, so presenting an ID was never a problem. But coming back to America was a different story. After I had spent 30 minutes picking out champagne at a…
The Balancing Act
A couple of weeks ago, while innocently playing basketball on a cold day, something unprecedented happened; I pulled a muscle in my back. Being the hypochondriac I am, I immediately assumed the worst: lung problems, kidney failure… you know the drill. After lying down for a couple of hours and taking Tylenol, I was confronted…
Money, money, money must be funny, in a rich man’s world
Coming out of college I was offered a job with a starting salary of $75,000 dollars. That’s more money than a lot of people 10+ years into their career make. I was living large! But when that job got in the way of my mental health and I was far from doing something I liked,…
Why I listen to (and ignore) my self talk
Throughout the course of a day or a week, we assume many different roles. During the day, I am an advocate (my job), but when I leave, I take on the role of avid yogi, friend, daughter, sister, committee member, and more. I don’t always notice when I switch from role to role, but there…
What is “adulting” anyway?
If you are close to my age, or know anyone who is close to my age, you’ve probably enountered the word “adulting”. Every time I pour myself a glass of wine and actually cook myself dinner (which, by the way, is not as frequent as it should be), I will praise myself for “adulting”, and,…
About the Authors
About Monica: I’m 24 years old, living in the delightful Denver area, where I grew up. I’m already working my second post graduation job (millenials, am I right?) and still feel as though I am seeking my purpose. While I won’t pretend to actually know any of the answers, I will enjoy the process of trying to figure it out and share that with you all.
About Meghan: Hi! I’m Meghan, Monica’s best friend (or at least I have self-proclaimed myself as such) I have lived in Denver, CO my whole life, Literally. I went to the University of Colorado Boulder SKO BUFFS and since graduating from there have been trying to figure out life as an adult. In my 1.5 years of living in the adult world, I haven’t learned much, but I have learned how to grow in times for hardship and I hope to share some of that advice with you!
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The TEA (Transitioning Early Adults) 