As the wise and powerful Britney Spears once said, “I’m not a girl, not yet a woman.”

Since starting college as a wide-eyed and innocent freshman two years ago, I can’t help but feel like I’m in this awkward stage between adolescence and adulthood. Legally, I’m an adult. I pay taxes, I can drive, and I could enlist in the military, if I wished. Mentally, however, I still feel like I need adult supervision. I still sleep with my favorite baby blanket, and I beg my mom to make my doctor’s appointments for me.

Now that I’m 20 and halfway through college, this has increasingly become a source of anxiety. When I was younger, I always looked up to people around my current age in awe.They seemed so cool, like they really had their lives together and knew exactly where they were going in life. I just assumed there was some test you took one day and bam! You were a certified adult.

Slowly but surely, that fantasy has crumbled all around me. There is no magical moment when I transform from child to adult. I spend half of my time worrying about not having my life together, and the other half worried that I’m wasting the best years of my life by worrying too much. I think that’s called a paradox - or an anxiety disorder. The jury’s still out.

Unfortunately, this is exactly the kind of stress that will make you feel more like Britney circa 2007:

Ouch. Luckily, as Britney Spears found out, there is a way to bounce back from this kind of breakdown and still be wildly successful. First things first, put the clippers down and back away, slowly.

I used to think if I eased my way into adulthood, I would wake up one day and get an email saying, “Congratulations, you have completed the grown-up tutorial. Here’s a checkbook and a voucher for a free bottle of wine!” And I’d live happily ever after as a real, bona fide grownup.

Surprisingly enough, that’s not how it works. I know, I’m shocked too. And disappointed. I could’ve used that wine to get through midterms.

Sadly, there’s no "Adulthood for Dummies

" manual that comes with detailed diagrams. In my humble opinion, I think the real secret to being a grown up is faking it. Really. You just act like you know what you’re doing, do what you think is right and pray that it works out. Be confident in yourself and your skills, even though you're not completely sure you know what you're doing.

The good news is that we are all in the same boat. We’re all just trying to figure out this crazy, complex, and confusing world and hoping we don’t screw it up so badly that we die. Cheers to us, fellow almost-adults. Fake it ‘til you make it.