When I was in my 20s, I saw my very first psychotherapy client. I was a Ph.D. student in clinical psychology at Berkeley. She was a 26-year-old woman named Alex. Now Alex walked into her first session wearing jeans and a big slouchy top, and she dropped onto the couch in my office and kicked off her flats and told me she was there to talk about guy problems. Now when I heard this, I was so (1) . My classmate got an arsonist for her first client. And I got a twentysomething who wanted to talk about boys. This I thought I could handle.
But I didn't handle it. With the funny stories that Alex would bring to session, it was easy for me just to (2) my head while we kicked the can down the road. "Thirty's the new 20," Alex would say, and as far as I could tell, she was right. Work happened later, marriage happened later, kids happened later, even death happened later. Twentysomethings like Alex and I had nothing but time.
But before long, my supervisor pushed me to push Alex about her love life. I pushed back.
I said, "Sure, she's (3) down, she's sleeping with a knucklehead, but it's not like she's going to marry the guy."
And then my supervisor said, "Not yet, but she might marry the next one. Besides, the best time to work on Alex's marriage is before she has one."
That's what psychologists call an "Aha!" moment. That was the moment I realized, 30 is not the new 20. Yes, people (4) later than they used to, but that didn't make Alex's 20s a developmental downtime. That made Alex's 20s a developmental sweet spot, and we were sitting there blowing it. That was when I realized that this sort of (5) neglect was a real problem, and it had real (6) , not just for Alex and her love life but for the careers and the families and the futures of twentysomethings everywhere.
There are 50 million twentysomethings in the United States right now. We\'re talking about 15 percent of the population, or 100 percent if you consider that no one's getting through (7) without going through their 20s first.
Raise your hand if you're in your 20s. I really want to see some twentysomethings here. Oh, yay! Y'all's awesome. If you work with twentysomethings, you love a twentysomething, you're losing sleep over twentysomethings, I want to see — Okay. Awesome, twentysomethings really matter.
So I (8) in twentysomethings because I believe that every single one of those 50 million twentysomethings deserves to know what psychologists, sociologists, neurologists and fertility specialists already know: that (9) your 20s is one of the simplest, yet most (10) , things you can do for work, for love, for your happiness, maybe even for the world.
上期答案
1 technical
2 diplomatic
3 negotiate
4 destroyed
5 concerned
6 a state of
7 protests
8 investigated
9 expected to
10 coalition