Killing Time

Lee Grube dropped out of the Community College of Southern Nevada after his sophomore year. The computer technology student was earning a decent living as a technician at the Adventuredome at Circus Circus, and as a DJ.

"I thought about continuing (school) at the time," he says. "But I said, 'Ooh, money.' "

However, since he turned 25 two years ago, Grube has regretted his decision.

"I have my own computer business now," he says, "but I'm finding with a lot of my computer work, (people ask), 'What degrees do you have?'

"Well, I don't."

Age-related crises no longer belong to the middle-aged. To describe its unique growing pains, Generation Next has coined the quarter-life crisis.

"There's a sense of dashed expectations when you grow up thinking you're going to be someone, and then you realize in your 20s or early 30s that, either you're not that person, or you have no idea who you are," says Alexandra Robbins, co-author of 2001's "Quarterlife Crisis: The Unique Challenges of Life in Your Twenties."

The phenomenon is especially pronounced in the valley, because the lure of immediately taking home $60,000 a year to park cars -- or $100,000 to ply cocktails in a skimpy dress -- often trumps long-term benefits that require living in college-induced poverty for half a decade or more.

"I got caught up in the lights, the free hookups and the money," says Mike Garcia, 33, who relocated from his native Hawaii 10 years ago with dreams of becoming a real-estate tycoon. Instead, he tended bar and was a floor host at VooDoo Lounge, Light and the Beach.

"We made anything from $500 to $1,500 a night," he says. "You could go out and blow $1,000 and know that you'd make it up the next day."

Garcia -- who ditched college in California during his sophomore year -- saved none of the money, and is currently between jobs.

"Nobody will hire me now," he says, "because they all want either girls or little skinny guys."

The once optimistic real-estate tycoon doesn't even own his own home.

"I'd trade everything I've got for a business degree," he says. "I know every aspect of the nightclub business. But I can't go to MGM and say, 'I know all this,' because they want somebody with a degree."

Kristin Sowden, 30, also considers herself a victim of Las Vegas culture. She says none of her Southern Nevada Vocational Technical Center classmates considered college an option.

"Some of them were going to try and get city jobs, some had dads who worked at the Dunes," she says. "When you get out of high school, and you're already making $10 an hour in a casino, that's a good job, and it only goes up from there."

Sowden had three children, with three fathers, beginning immediately after high school. She has supported them by working administrative and construction jobs.

"Now we're just always broke," she says. "I have no retirement, I have no benefits. My daughter's 11 and I don't have money to buy her nice things."

"When you take the easy way out when you're young -- whether it's in the gaming industry or other jobs that fall into your lap -- then eventually, you're gonna wake up and realize that you're either not that person, or that you don't know who you are behind the choices you've made," Robbins says. "And that's when you crash."

Although that crash can occur anytime between the ages of 18 to 35, University of Nevada, Las Vegas student adviser Ryan Lathrum sees the magic number as 25.

"That's when different things start happening," he says. "Friends start getting married and relatives start passing away. Parents get old and people start to do things that, during college, they didn't think they were going to have to do."

Although unlabeled as such until 1997, the quarter-life crisis has existed since the advent of extended adolescence in the '50s. It was a major subplot of 1967's "The Graduate," in which Dustin Hoffman's direction-challenged romantic interacts with corrupted adults whose unappealing advice includes molding a future out of plastics.

"But I think it's more intense now," Robbins says. "There's so much more competition now than there was 10, 20, 30 years ago because there are so many more students applying to college.

"Also, the effect that exorbitant student loans have on young people today goes way beyond their financial realm. It can affect every decision they make, from romantic to social to career."

Traditional psychology, however, has not embraced the phenomenon as genuine.

"The notion that a person will inevitably go through a crisis -- as if this were some sort of law of nature -- doesn't hold a lot of water, nor is it recognized by mainstream psychological research," says Las Vegas psychologist David P. Gosse.

"The problem with this notion is it risks pathologizing what is otherwise a normal developmental stage in young adulthood. There is a normal range of uncomfortable emotions that can occur at times during this transitional period -- including confusion, anxiety, depression, self-doubt and uncertainty -- but the vast majority of people get through it one way or the other.

"And many people enter their mid-20s with a great deal of enthusiasm, idealism and optimism."

Robbins -- a journalist by trade with no psychology degree -- disagrees. She says that of the thousands of 20-somethings she interviewed during her research, the vast majority were crying for help. A quarter-life crisis caused an anxiety disorder or depression in some of them, she adds.

"I have heard from many people going through these issues who became suicidal because of them," she says.

Both Grube and Garcia say their current situations render college unfeasible. But for Sowden, attending college since 2005 offers a twinge of hope.

"I feel like doors are just now for the first time being opened," says the UNLV psychology major, who is paying for day care with part of her student loan.

"I find that I'm a lot happier since I know that I'm going to be achieving something and not working dead-end jobs anymore," she says.

Lathrum says he sees dozens of similar students who return to school each year nursing soul-crushing wounds from the real world.

"The average age for a graduate with a bachelor's degree at UNLV is 27," he says. "A lot of people are surprised by that because it should be 22 or 23 for a four-year university."

Lathrum says he cautions all his students to try and live on campus, however.

"The outside forces aren't as powerful," he says, "especially if they have a full-time job that's off campus."