When I was younger, I always dreamed of becoming an adult. A time where I was living on my own: self-sufficient and thriving. I dreamt that my life would be complete and come together like the puzzles my family and I did each year at the beach. I imagined my four years of college would be a breeze. Each year I would mature more until… BAM! Senior year and I was ready for adulthood! I’m not sure if that day is going to come, currently, I am finishing my junior year of college and I still don’t know how to boil an egg.

So here are five things I've learned in an attempt to adult:

1. Time management

The less is more strategy. No longer do we have mommy and daddy breathing down our necks to get to school or write your thank you notes to grandma. We are left completely on our own with the danger of free time! The lure of procrastination pulls at us as we try and study. Tempting us with the all amazing and mind numbing enticements of Netflix. Learning to stay in the library and study is half the battle. In college we are told that we will have all this free time, so join a club, a sports team, sing, dance, study hard and make great grades, but also try and have fun you’re only in college once! I tried this and epically failed. I spread myself too thin and ended up missing commitments and club meetings. I learned that less involvement in more fulfilling venues are better than trying to try to do everything.

2. Look good, feel good

I learn to look like a real person most days. Now I know we all of have those days were we roll out of bed and are just not feeling it that morning, I get it. But when six of the days in a week are spent in sweat pants and no bra, something needs to change. I learned to wake up a half hour earlier to brush my hair and throw on some make up. It is crazy how the more time I put into how I look, the less comments I get like, “Are you sick?” and “Have you slept in the last week?”

3. Play nice with others

I learn how to play nice with others. We were taught this concept long ago when we were little kids on the playground. But somewhere along the way a lot of us forget the key concept of how to be nice. This lesson was an important one to learn because come on, we can’t just openly hate people. That is super awkward for people around us. We dislike because one that’s super awkward. I learned from a wise man, that is takes more energy to hate someone than to love them.

4. “No.”

I learned it’s OK to say no. Going into college I wanted to take every opportunity that was presented to me. I vowed to say yes to everything that came my way. That meant going to parties I did not want to go to, pretending to love music that wasn’t my jam and doing things that did not really make me happy. It became so apart of me that I had to learn to say no and feel ok with that decision. I had to learn what made me happy and surround myself with people who shared like interests. I learned that saying no and doing what I enjoyed sure as hell made me a lot happier than pretending to enjoy something that did not.

5. But everyone else is doing it!

I learned just because everyone else is doing does not mean I can too. One of the hardest lessons I learned was when I became sober. Learning to be sober in a party atmosphere of college live was difficult. I wanted to be like everyone else and get bombed on a weekends and wake up the next morning and laugh about it with friends, as we all nursed hangovers. Unfortunately, I found out in the beginning of this year that I cannot withhold that life style and a big change needed to happen. At first, it was hard going out being sober in a sea of drunk people. But I learned that not doing what everyone else does has it benefits. I learned to be happy with the things that I do have in my life and let go of the things I cannot have. I learned how to be happy and coincidentally enough most of the times it was doing something that not everyone else was doing.

Adults have always been these mysterious older beings with their independence and maturity. Yet, the steps to becoming one of these mysterious beings are often vague. Adulting is often something that is learned by trial and error, emphasis on the error. As we approach this scary yet thrilling age of freedom there are things we need to learn first. Some will learn them sooner than others but in the end it only matters if the lessons stick.