They say you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. That's not exactly true, but the sentiment remains: who you are is heavily linked to the people around you.

For my first real article, I wanted to choose a topic that sets the tone for my future issues. The whole goal of this project was to experiment, so there'll only be one piece of consistency: me and the lens I write through. Talking about myself feels weird. I've already exceeded my monthly 'me' quota with my introductory issue. But I can about the people I surround myself with.

Thanks for coming back for seconds. Hopefully by the end of this, you'll learn more about where I'm coming from and in turn, spur a bit of action and self reflection.

For now, let me talk about my best friends.

The Yuppie Bubble, My Friends, and Me

The Framingham Heart Study assessed a densely interconnected social network of 12,067 people over 32 years. They determined that if your friend smokes, you're 61% more likely to smoke. If your friend's friend smokes, you're 29% more likely to smoke. If you're friend's friend's friend smoked, you're still 11% more likely to smoke. The study found similar likelihoods among social networks other factors, such as obesity and happiness. The exact reasoning for this goes isn't exact, like the chicken or the egg. Do people gravitate towards each other because we enable each other's current lives, or do we change each other? Either way, we tend live within social bubbles (not the COVID kind) that mirror ourselves whether we like it or not.

This fact is all the more important to know when you're in your 20s, a particularly formative time in your life, as famously detailed by Meg Jay in The Defining Decade. While that book focuses mostly on romantic relationships, it's fair to say that if the people you're around in your 20s can impact the rest of your life.

Now, I'm basic. I'm a fresh university graduate starting out in the finance sector working out of the city, so it's not hard to pin down my demographic bubble. I'm a young professional, affectionately (or...not) known to some as a yuppie.

What's a Yuppie?

For all my marketing nerds out there, I've done a bit of research (i.e I thought about it for a minute) to create this very accurate persona.

Yuppie (noun)

A young college-educated adult who is employed in a well paying profession and who lives and works in or near a large city.

• Early to mid 20s

• Studied some combination of commerce, law, engineering and data. Bubble will include friends in med.

• Work in a Big 4 Something (likely bank, audit, consulting) or tech

• If they don't live at home, probably live in the city or the inner suburbs

• Purchasers of cafe coffee, RM Williams shoes, and Sony XM4 headphones

• Roam in packs for 5pm Friday night knockoff drinks in CBD or Richmond

• Annoying (I can say this!)

I'm in a graduate program, which is almost the perfect social context to think about young professional culture. A bunch of youngins being stuck into a cohort, almost like high school, except in our finest corporations. What could go wrong?

How on earth does everyone know each other?

I've observed a couple of things largely from the grad program that really made me think of yuppie-isms as a bubble. Perhaps most straightforwardly, many of their friends and family are also young upwardly mobile professionals even outside the company. I'm guilty of this too. As someone rattled off companies in our industry during a workshop, I was able to think of many people in my circle who worked in some of them, leading me to reflect on how I first met them.

University

The same way nerds ate lunch together in high school, my own yuppie bubble were all academic and career oriented students in university. It also helped that we were all living away from home and close to uni, so we had the same common interests, like a good discount or splitting bulk ingredients (See thumbnail where we split a small pizza in 6 just so we could taste it). How-we-met stories ranged from running into each other in class and exchanging notes, to being on similar club committees and meeting at mutual friends' parties. Uni isn't everything - god knows I barely use my finance degree - but it's undeniable that it gives you a great way to meet new people with similar aspirations in your classes and extracurriculars.

Growing up

It's also worth noting that my workplace unfortunately only accepts PRs and citizens, which means almost everyone was raised in Melbourne too. Many of these yuppie relationships even extend from even before they've individually entered higher education. Not just run-ins in uni, but the same friends and high schools. Few even had friends or family in the company. (To get into that is potentially a further discussion on nepotism and privilege, but perhaps that may be too spicy for issue #2.)

Is this bubble necessarily a good thing?

As is most thing I've written about...it can be. But not entirely.

On one hand, it's great when everyone knows each other. You or a friend interested in a certain career path? You probably have another friend or a friend-of-a-friend who's willing to help you. Bitching about a terrible boss? Your pal gets it, they'll listen. It's also great when everyone has the same lifestyle. It's easier to organise dinners and hangouts when everyone finishes a little after 5pm. making the most of that little pocket of your life where you finally have disposable income but also freedom.

On the other hand, it can be an echo chamber, especially in challenging times such as now. For example, going to the same classes means you have similar knowledge on a topic. Having career stability and connections is a massive privilege, so it makes sense to want to stay in your comfortable bubble and stick to those easy conversations. However, being exposed only to people just like you is a surefire way to hinder your growth. Not only could this make you worse at your job, but your 20s is also the best time to be exposed to different perspectives, take more risks by doing anything 'unconventional' like a big career or lifestyle change that may be better aligned to what you want out of your life. When it looks like everyone's moving up in their careers quickly and has their shit together, there may be that pressure to stick on that path, may it be to prove that you can or you think that's the only right way to do things.

What's my bubble?

Like most early twenty somethings, I'm in a pretty transitionary period in my life and that's reflected in my friends here in Australia. My main circle of friends were people I met in high school or university, working in some mix of finance, marketing and/or tech. If they aren't yuppies yet, most of them are working towards that. As expected, all of the partners (the...friend group in laws?) that we've met post-uni are similar. While many of us had different upbringings and brought different perspective to the table, over time, our lives and lifestyles have definitely converged.

This issue was partially inspired by my friend Meadow. During one of our regular squad dinners around a year ago, the final year of each our respective degrees, she said that our ambitions were a big reason she gravitated towards us. It rings all the more true now that most of the people at that dinner table have transitioned into the very professional careers we were working towards at the time; through bouncing back from job hunt droughts and layoffs, to feeling stuck in current jobs and facing professional crossroads. Many of our conversations start with "Hey, x happened at work today. Have ya'll noticed that too?" following a chorus of "Yeah! Right, that happens with me too, it's interesting that.."

Well, there you go. I hope you've learnt a bit more about me.

I intended to write this issue introduce the stage of life I'm in, and the lens through which I will write. Instead, it's captured a realisation of mine on paper about the bubble I live in. It's important to step back every once in a while and pop that bubble. Do I really only want to hang out with people who are just like me? Do I want to be like them?

More sentimentally, this issue is also a love letter to my circle of friends. Working for the first time and living in a city during a time as dynamic as our 20s, having a driven and safe support system of friends has kept me going. I admit how lucky I am to be living my main-character-Friends-the-sitcom era of life, and the person that's allowing me to slowly become. I can't count the number of times I've come away from our conversations with a light bulb moment, a new question to ponder on, or at least a weight lifted off my shoulders. I can only hope that my readers take away that same feeling from my writing.

As you crystallise into the person you want to become, ask yourself: are you surrounded by people who allow you to become the best version of yourself?

Writing Playback

Hi! This is a new segment where I look back on how I did things and think about what I would've done differently. It's the perfectionist in me, but also forces me to reflect and learn as I go, which is the whole point of this.

1. I didn't write with a point to get to - what exactly do I want readers to come away from this with ? My usual routine is to think of an angle to start with and fill in the blanks from then. While that method Next time I write a similar format, I will write though some points in each section before writing. That may be less stressful.

2. Scope - I feel like I introduced a lot of half baked ideas when I could've focused on a few.

3. The tone I took sounded like I know what I'm doing. I really don't.

📌 TORI'S, CBD. On the topic of Friends, this hidden laneway dessert cafe is my friend group's Central Perk, thanks to one of us adopting it as her go-to comfort food spot. Go here for asian-flavoured artisan cakes, smaller bites like caneles and madeleines, and my favourite houjicha latte ever.

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