Rachael Lewis, 21, a MA journalism student at University of Kent.
My 20s are nothing like I expected them to be. I thought that I’d be going out being able to experience things. I really wanted to move to Spain and obviously because of a global pandemic, things haven’t quite turned out the way I expected them to.
I feel a bit scared to be in my 20s now, I still at heart feel like I’m about 13, I still mess around like a 13-year-old. When I was like15, to me, being 21 was really old and I always thought once I’m that age I’m going to have my life sorted out, I’ll have a job and probably have a house, but you realise once you actually get into your 20s that you shouldn’t just be rushing to grow up all the time and just enjoy the age that you are.
Friends
I’ve done a degree already and after those three years, everybody moves away. You soon realise who your actual friends are. I think a big realisation that I’ve had growing up is, you aren’t going to keep every single friend that you made at school that you made at university that you make in any place you go, but your life is about meeting different people along the way.
I’ve also found that some of the best friends are the people who I never expected to even be really close friends with and you just meet people and get along with them so well.
I love being with my friends. I’ve got such incredible friends and a lot of them I haven’t seen in a long time, which is quite sad because we used to live together and then we all graduated and everyone’s moved away; because of Covid, we haven’t I haven’t seen some of my best friends in six months and that’s really quite difficult.
I think being in my 20s has taught me to just be with my friends and have fun with the girls and not worry about what people think, not worry about boys.
Saying yes
I say yes to everything, that’s my motto. If I get invited somewhere and I don’t really know people, I will say yes, just to put myself out there.
A lot of the times I can come across as being overly confident but I do actually get really anxious; like when walking into like a room full of people and I’ve got to socialise with these people. As I have gotten older, that is gotten worse. I think that is because I am more aware of the fact that when you get older, people are not going to pretend to like you if they don’t have to and I think that is a lot more scary.
Why care?
I am not very competitive at all. I don’t think I have the energy to be competitive, I am just too lazy to be competitive about anything. I have very much grown up knowing that everybody brings their own skills to the table.
If I do compare myself, it is more subconscious and it is more like, I will appreciate that someone else is better than me, or that somebody else can help me out. If someone gave me feedback on something and said maybe you should changed that, I would never think why are you saying that. I am very open to criticism because I know I am not perfect at anything.
I actually think for me it was the opposite. When I was at school and growing up I compared myself to other people a lot, not self-conscious, I’ve never really been self-conscious because growing up in the theatre you kind of learned to be really outgoing and not really care what people think of you.
When I saw my friends going to uni, to do really serious subjects like business and psychology, and I was doing drama. I got so much just people making comments, saying what are you doing that for? It’s a waste of your time.
As I have grown older, I have realised I am on my own path and if other people want to judge me for my choices or what I want to do my career or what I have done as a degree, then that’s their choice.
I recently made a YouTube channel and that was something I would have found way too embarrassing to do when I was younger. I wanted to make YouTube channel for so many years and I just was always so scared of getting judged by people on social media and people making fun of me. And now I realised, I don’t care. If it makes me happy, I am going to do it. If you judge me, that says more about you than it does me.
The most exciting 10 years…
I think your 20s really define you as a person because up until you are 20, your life is kind of already been planned for you. You go to school in the area wherever your family lives, then I think a lot of times people go to university or decide to go and do an apprenticeship based on what their friends are doing, based on what their family want them to do. The things you do, even if it’s subconscious, are impacted by your surroundings.
But a lot of times your 20s are for actually finding out who you are and like going traveling or making mistakes. It is the years to date somebody and regret it, or start doing a job you absolutely hate and then leave dramatically out the door, that is what your 20s are for, to figure out what you want to do with your life, where you’re going to go with your life and set up those like foundations so that when you do turn 30 you can kind of know where you are going.
What I have achieved in my 20s and where I want to go from here, I think they do define you as a person. Actually I have never thought about it like that and I think it is probably the most exciting 10 years that we have got ahead of us.