Are you known as the family underachiever? Do you break all the rules that people around you expect you to follow?

Maybe you’re 26 and you still haven’t completed your degree. Or you still work at a local coffee shop, when your parents would really prefer that you become an investment banker. Perhaps you refuse to pay your dues and climb the corporate ladder like mom and dad did. Or you just want to wander around Europe for a year and “find” yourself, to your parents’ frustration?

Penelope Trunk has written an open letter to the parents of “underachievers” and “lost” twentysomethings everywhere, encouraging boomers not to apply old standards to today’s college students and young professionals.

Today success is personal. It’s about using the years of emerging adulthood to figure out what works for you. This is time to experiment – try things and quit them and try other things. This is a time to have gaps in resumes, red in bank accounts, and a suitcase packed, ready to go at a moment’s notice. These are symptoms of someone who is learning a lot and growing a lot.

Personal growth looks a lot like being lost. Lost is okay. Who wouldn’t be with twenty years of schooling and no preparation for adult life? People grow more when they are lost then when they are on a straight path with a clear view of where they are going.

Don’t tell me that your kid is a bar tender and will never grow up. Bar tenders have some of the best social skills in the workforce, and social skills are what matters. Bar tenders are not underachievers. Also, did you ever stop to ask your bar-tender kid what he does during the day when he’s not pouring drinks? He’s probably doing something fun and cool and a little risky that you didn’t have the guts to try til you had a midlife crisis.

Perhaps I just like this great article because Penelope says it’s okay to take a year off and live in Thailand, like I’d love to do this year! But, this is a great post if you’re feeling lost and need a little encouragement to keep you pressing ahead, or if you need to reassure your boomer parents that it’s okay for you to take it slow as you work on your personal development and seek out what you truly want to do with your life and your career. It’s a big decision!

[source: Stop worrying that your twentysomething is lost on the Brazen Careerist blog]