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" \n Approaching 30 (or just getting over the trauma of the big 3-0)? Senior Beauty Editor of RealBeauty.com, (and former Cosmo staffer!), Andrea Lavinthal, feels your pain. Which is why she and co-author, Jessica Rozler, teamed up to write Your So-Called Life: A Guide to Boys, Body Issues, and Other Big-Girl Dramas You Thought You Would Have Figured Out By Now. With advice from doctors, career counselors, and financial planners, this hysterical but practical book guides women through round two of puberty \u2014 the time of life that the authors have coined &amp;quot;Redo-berty.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;&amp;#039;Redo-berty,&amp;#039; also sometimes called a &amp;#039;thrisis,&amp;#039; usually occurs between the ages of 26 and 32, and is that final push into adulthood,&amp;quot; says Lavinthal. Redo-berty can feel just as awkward as your puberty years, except instead of being jealous that Sally Smith has boobs and you don&amp;#039;t, you&amp;#039;re freaked that Sally Smith has a big rock on her finger or an &amp;quot;Executive&amp;quot; something in her job title, while you&amp;#039;re stuck in a dead-end relationship and/or &amp;quot;career.&amp;quot; The book has all kinds of great advice for dealing with those growing-up-for-real pains, but one of our favorite parts? The chapter on &amp;quot;Coping Mechanisms: What Kind of Adult Are You?&amp;quot; Check out some of the common &amp;quot;types&amp;quot; below to see where you fit in. Forever 21: The I-Won&amp;#039;t-Grow-Up-Adult Symptoms: Last Friday, after winning first place in a beer pong tournament, you commemorated your victory by getting into a catfight outside the bar. Then, after the police left without filing an incident report, you went to a club in a converted warehouse space to watch a tragically hip Swedish deejay spin for a tragically hip crowd. It was there you met Sebastian, a really cute guy who took you to an after-hours party...in his dorm room.  Upsides: You are having yourself a damn good time, and we can&amp;#039;t fault you on that.  Downsides: It&amp;#039;s hard to keep up the rest of your life \u2014 mainly, your job \u2014 when you party this hard. And this Tara Reid-like behavior is also not conducive to holding down a serious relationship. Plus, take a look around \u2014 are all your partners-in-crime recent college grads while your old friends have gotten on with their lives? If the answer is yes, it&amp;#039;s time to remove the blinders. You&amp;#039;re not fresh out of school anymore and acting like you are may actually be making you appear older than you are. This doesn&amp;#039;t mean you should never go out, it just means you shouldn&amp;#039;t go out like it&amp;#039;s Spring Break 2004.  SOY: The Sudden-Onset Yuppie Symptoms: You actually care about the vintage of your Pinot, the thread count of your sheets, and a bunch of other proper &amp;quot;adult&amp;quot; things that your twenty-year-old self would not have been aware of, let alone cared about it.  Upsides: Kudos to you for making the effort to embrace the finer, more adult things in life \u2014 like realizing that an $8.99 plastic handle of vodka is not a &amp;quot;great deal&amp;quot; and sheets aren&amp;#039;t just a step up from your college boyfriend&amp;#039;s bare mattress. There&amp;#039;s nothing wrong with trying to come across as a little more sophisticated.  Downsides: It&amp;#039;s really easy to get carried away and morph into a mini Martha Stewart \u2014 and that&amp;#039;s not a &amp;quot;good thing.&amp;quot; Remember that growing up is about opening yourself up to new experiences, but you don&amp;#039;t want to get obsessive to the point that you become a snot who wouldn&amp;#039;t deign to eat a bowl of Kraft mac n&amp;#039; cheese.  The Early Decision Adult: Married with a Mortgage and a Minivan Symptoms: You&amp;#039;re married with a mortgage and a minivan.  Upsides: You&amp;#039;ve successfully overcome all that becoming-an-adult angst, which is not easy. In short, you have your shit together.  Downsides: You may find that you have more in common with the girls on MTV&amp;#039;s Teen Mom than with the ones you&amp;#039;ve known for two decades. But be careful not to judge those friends who may not have it as &amp;quot;together&amp;quot; as you do. Oh, and just because you&amp;#039;re a real, functioning adult with your own family, doesn&amp;#039;t mean that you should do whatever your virtual friends on mommy message boards tell you to do. You&amp;#039;re your own person, and you&amp;#039;re doing just fine without morphing into a mommybot.  Senioritis: The Premature Granny Symptoms: The last time you skimmed through a magazine while waiting in line at the grocery store, you passed over &amp;quot;Seven Steamy Secrets of Sexier Sex&amp;quot; and went to &amp;quot;Eight Simple Ways to Improve Your Memory.&amp;quot; You&amp;#039;ve started leaving concerts before the encore in order to &amp;quot;beat the traffic,&amp;quot; and you rarely wear high heels (they aggravate your bunion), or stay up past 11:30 p.m.  Upsides: You&amp;#039;re true to yourself \u2014 if you want to stay in and watch Dateline on a Friday night, then damnit, you&amp;#039;ll stay in and watch Dateline on a Friday night. And while some of us have trouble embracing adulthood, you have no problem with the fact that you&amp;#039;re a real live grown-up.  Downsides: Just because you feel older and more mature, doesn&amp;#039;t mean you have to act three times your age. Instead of completely hitting the brakes, try finding ways to go out without totally raging. If you&amp;#039;re a homebody to the core, make staying home a fun place where you entertain, rather than a place where you just sloth on the couch. Lavinthal has one last piece of advice for those of you feeling anxious about the escalating number of candles on your birthday cake: &amp;quot;Your thrisis can be turbulent and confusing, but it can also be exhilarating and extremely fulfilling. Now is the time when you can have the best of both worlds: the energy of relative youth and the good sense that comes with adulthood.&amp;quot; We&amp;#039;ll raise an eight dollar hand \u2014 no, make that a glass of fine, full-bodied red \u2014 and say cheers to that. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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