The introduction begins with the tale of Kate, a lost twentysomething who enrolled in Jay's therapy sessions. Stories are told about Kate's failures so far: she needs a driver's license to get to any good jobs, she distracts herself from her depression with shallow histrionics, and she insists on contemplating her life rather than living it. A conclusion is eventually made; Kate acts the way she does because she follows the doctrine that "thirty is the new twenty", giving her an excuse to procrastinate on her goals with the promise that they'll be easier to fulfill in her thirties. Jay denies this and makes an example out of Kate, likening her experiences and thoughts with those of many other twentysomethings. In talking specifically about Kate, Meg Jay makes it much easier to understand the plight of every new adult.
Then, understanding that just anecdotes and examples are have messages too shallow to provoke understanding amongst her readers, Jay weaves a few quotations regarding early adult life for twentysomethings to use as maxims to live by. For example, when countering Kate's desire to contemplate her life, Jay urges her to stop following Socrates' "the unexamined life is not worth living" and start abiding by Sheldon Kopp's "the unlived life is not worth examining". She later states the adage that "hope is a good breakfast but a bad supper" when asking twentysomethings to hope before their twenties and then act during their twenties rather than hoping before and after their twenties. In using these short, memorable phrases, Jay provides her readers with a constant stream of take-aways from her text. Instead of having to develop mottos for themselves, they just have to read Jay's book.
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