Adulting: /əˈdəlt,ˈadˌəlt - ing/ (v). to do grown up things and hold responsibilities such as, a 9-5 job, a mortgage/rent, a car payment, or anything else that makes one think of grown-ups.
At this point and time in our lives, none of us feel as though we are fully ready to "adult." We live every day preparing ourselves to adult, but the closer we get to this time in our lives, the scarier it seems.
For those of us in college, adulting means paying bills, having a big girl/boy job, having to leave our parents phone plans, and start taking relationships seriously. Adulting means the consequences for drinking during the week are going to hurt a lot more, staying up late watching movies becomes a thing of the past, and not having to work because your parents help pay for you really doesn't exist anymore. In order to adult, our lives have to change entirely...right?
Wrong. I've thought about this a lot lately and I've decided that we can be totally capable of adulting, but still "experience college." Everyone seems to think it's one or the other, and honestly, for some people, it may be. But for others, once you learn how to manage your time and find a job that works well with your school schedule, you can still live and be young and enjoy your life. You will have to make some sacrifices, and it may mean that you aren't always up to date on the latest everything, but the older you get, the more you'll realize that you are preparing yourself better than you can imagine and adulting won't seem so scary.
We don't like adulting because with that comes responsibility, and no one is honestly ready for all that right now. But, that's the beauty of college. College is learning to adult, but still being able to survive if you make a few mistakes. College is the stepping stone between life as we know it and the reality of the cruelty of the real world. College is primarily intended to prepare us for our goals--not crush them.
Adulting won't be easy and it's still really, really scary sometimes, but that's what this time is for right now: preparation.
