How many times, over the past 20 years or so, has this happened to you: You observe or hear about parents bending over backward to shower their kids with the best of everything, and you shake your head and remark, "Those kids sure are going to be in for a shock when they grow up, get out in the world and discover it's not all about them"?

You were right. They've grown up, and they've gotten a terrible shock.

But don't worry: There is already a raft of self-help books and a Web site to help them through it, and their malaise now has a name: quarterlife crisis.

Many of those long out of their 20s may have been too busy putting a parent in a nursing home, limping through a divorce, figuring out how to keep paying a young scholar's skyrocketing tuition or all three at once to comprehend the tragedy of being 25, well-educated and cripplingly bored.

A generation that grew up with lavish birthday parties where everyone got a present, was allowed to subsist on a diet of chicken fingers and curly fries, all got to play regardless of ability and learned about life from "Beverly Hills 90210," "Friends" and "Dawson's Creek" has now discovered that life after college can be, well, kind of disappointing.

Welcome to the real world. This is a place where everyone knows at least one writer, actor or musician who is a genius and can't get anywhere, and yet Anna Nicole Smith has had her own show.

I don't mean to sound unsympathetic, but this generation deserves as much credit for inventing the trauma of discovering college life does not prepare one for working life as the baby boomers deserve for inventing sex and parenthood.

I suppose, if you go back far enough, you find happy young folks who were hired right out of college into fun, satisfying, well-paying fast-track jobs that allowed them to save up enough within a year or two to marry their soulmates and buy beautiful homes and live happily ever after. But I suspect that "back far enough" may take you all the way to "once upon a time."

Being good at school has nothing to do with being good at life. School is a guided, orderly procession from one goal to the next, year after year. Real life is a scary, formless landscape with no map and no way to predict what lies over the next hill or whether the sky will be filled with sunshine or a plague of locusts.

Freedom's just another word for "Now what?"

You may be good at calculus and deconstructionist literary analysis and have a lovely singing voice, but suddenly, nobody cares. They keep asking you whether you'll work nights and weekends and whether, despite your master's degree, you'd be comfortable with administrative duties.

(Wait till the part where they offer you a salary that will keep you in your parents' basement for the next 10 years. Surprise!)

Worst of all, the very high expectations that everyone encouraged you to have for yourself and your experiences will be like ground glass in your Starbucks scone. It starts when your peers start getting married and buying lovely furniture, and it keeps going until, one night, you are watching one of your classmates on "The Daily Show" while folding the clothes you just brought back from the Laundromat.

If you're making good money, you'll wonder why you're bored and lonely. If you're underemployed and broke, you'll wonder why employers don't recognize your tremendous talent and worth. But take heart. You get over that. After a decade or so, you lose all confidence in your talent and worth. Being a cog is easier, and the hours are better.

Besides, as a colleague in one of my first jobs told me, "Age and treachery will always triumph over youth and talent." Remember, kids: Age and treachery are very realistic goals, unlike superstardom.

The truth is that, despite a few exciting moments, adult life is mostly about sitting in traffic, paying bills, being passed over for promotions and filling out forms. When you've embraced mediocrity and stopped trying to change the world, you'll have crossed a threshold.

You'll be ready for your midlife crisis. And at least that comes with a sports car.