I’m at a really strange crossroad in my life. I am poised to graduate and earn my Bachelor’s degree this coming December and it recently dawned on me that I’m becoming an adult. Sure, after high school graduation I would occasionally proclaim that, “I can, because I’m an adult!” to anything that I was doing. But saying you’re an adult or being over 18 doesn’t mean that you’re an adult.
There has been a few times between my eighteenth birthday and now when I have thought to myself, “Now I’m a REAL adult.” When I saved my money to travel to France and Washington D.C. during my senior year of high school, when I chose my college and came home only every once in awhile during my first year, when I chose to jet off into the sunset and live in a different country on my own, when I took my first legal sip of alcohol… Each time I would think, “Yeah, that’s what adults do. I’m one of them now.”
I’m experiencing that feeling again. I started making a bucket list for my post-grad life (at least the first five years of it, because I’m crazy and so is life). While writing this list, I was overwhelmed by the amount of freedom I felt by just deciding that I wanted to do things not directly related to my own education. For the past year and a half, I have really felt out of place with school. Like I’d somehow forgotten how to be a student, even though I’ve been a student for the past 17, almost 18 years of my life.
I’ve felt like it’s time to move on from school for a while now. I’ve gotten more satisfaction out of the work I’m doing than what I’ve been doing in the classes I’ve been registered for. I love writing for my school’s newspaper, looking after young children, educating students, writing for Odyssey, taking care of my cat and trying to keep up with my apartment. All of those mean more to me than a C I got on a paper in an English class I just couldn’t give a damn about or that philosophy class I just didn’t understand and failed during my Junior year-- classes that were supposed to count for something and make me wiser about the world.
It’s not that I suddenly don’t want to become wiser or that becoming more intelligent has suddenly ceased to hold any importance for me, but wanting to move on from institutions of education equates in my brain to moving into a more adult mindset.
I’m starting to think that adulthood is like tomorrow--it never comes. It’s this idea of being perfectly autonomous and having your life completely in order. When you think you’ve reached adulthood, there’s always another milestone to reach. Buying your first car, finding the person you want to spend the rest of your life with, moving to the place you want to set down roots, maybe welcoming your first child into the world or into your life, experiencing the death of a parent or a best friend… there will always be just one more thing to make us know and remember that we are adults.
Adulthood doesn’t just hit you on the day you turn 18. Adulthood is a process and maybe actually wanting to leave college (at least for a while) in my next milestone in my process of adulthood. And that’s okay.
