Gold Stars A column by Rainesford Stauffer that examines millennial culture, the idealization of youth, and unpacks the myth of your twenties as the "time of your life."

What to Do With Your Twenties When Your Life Plans Fall Apart

It’s a strange sort of self-reliance, thinking you can out-plan the grief, and heartbreak, and confusion of growing up.

To Every Woman Who Spent Her Twenties Apologizing

I squeezed myself in around other people’s priorities and problems, all the while saying: Take up all the room you want. I will make myself fit.

Your Friend Group Should Look Like the Cast of a Twenty-Something Drama (and Other Myths About Millennial Friendship)

New responsibilities clogged up phone lines and changed what used to be lifelines—how were we supposed to maintain our relationships?

My Mom’s Pandemic Piano Taught Me You Can Always “Find Yourself”

It was the first time I’d ever noticed growth or newness this way: reclaiming, or returning, rather than overhauling and chasing.

The Obsession with “Getting Ahead” in Your Twenties Is Failing Young People

Why do we need measuring sticks like college and marriage and leaving home to track our worth?

To All the Coffeeshops I’ve Called Home

I drove past the third places that I’d grown up in and, through the eyes of an adult, saw a person shaped by spaces that are in-between.