Elizabeth Day

It was such a shock to me when I was like, I have to pay taxes.

I'd love to have been taught key accountancy skills or the importance of collaboration or, dare I say it, the limits of fertility.

Whereas it felt like all of my education was about...

double maths and don't get pregnant as a teenage girl.

So much of it was that.

And obviously that's important, but I think that there needs to be a little more balance.

So I think that's why teenage-dom is quite tough.

And then you enter your twenties and you're out of school and either you're in the world of work or you're at university and that kind of forging and discovery of identity continues.

And then it's your first experience of adult life.

And adult life is bafflingly free of signposts and exams.

So there's no exam that you can take that will tell you that you're doing a good job at adulting.

So in your 20s, all you have to compare yourself to...

It's the example of your parents, if you're lucky enough to have parents, or it's cultural signals.

So rom-coms, like the stuff that you watch on television, what that's telling you, or it's your peer group.

And in the age of social media, that's so much more pressured than ever before.

So you will...

My experience, and it was a world before Instagram, was very much like, I'm not doing as well as X. I'm not as far along in my career as I should be because of Y. I am not having a footloose, fancy, free life of the sort embodied in Sex and the City or Friends.

And should I also be having a long-term relationship or should I be having one-night stands?

I just don't know where I sit in this.

And so that's why your 20s, I think, are tough.