Just Keep Going

Advice for Surviving Your 20s From Hamilton’s Lin-Manuel Miranda

''Being in your twenties is a mixed bag. Even if you later go on to win a Pulitzer Prize, a MacArthur Genius Award, a Tony, a Grammy and an Emmy in your 30s, your twenties are still a period of growing pains. Just ask Lin-Manuel Miranda, now a TIME 100 honoree.

Miranda says his twenties were “the most fun,” but he certainly had his fair share of quarter-life crisis anxiety. “The drawback of your twenties is the terror of not knowing if you’re actually going to accomplish what you set out to accomplish or who you’re going to be when you grow up,” he said. “I think it’s pretty miraculous that I survived my twenties without ever working as a waiter.” Not that he didn’t have his fair share of odd jobs: Miranda working as a seventh-grade English teacher, a political jingle-writer and a Bar Mitzvah dancer...''

by Charlotte Alter