As I sit at the corner table in Mocha Joe’s Coffeehouse and observe my surroundings, I evaluate my previous three weeks; my first foray into real adulthood.
My journey started, as most do, with hugging my parents at the LAX airport. leaving my home in Santa Monica, California to start an internship in Brattleboro, Vermont. Eighteen years young with the “real-world” experience of your typical zoo animal, my time in Brattleboro has been an adventure to say the least.
I’ve pushed a “borrowed” shopping cart filled to the brim with groceries up the monstrous Union street hill (which, for full disclosure, was not the act of a willful teen looking to stay in shape, but rather the needs of a car-less girl, seeking momentum as she made the uphill climb.) I’ve explored some of the local shops, all of which are hip, local businesses with names like “Twice Upon a Time: No Ordinary Antique Shop” or the “Mystery on Main” bookstore (which only sells mystery novels.) I’ve worked long hours and rotated from coffee shop to coffee shop as I attempt to finish work without killing my wallet (unsuccessfully, I’ll add.)
But I’ve also needed to call home several times. I’ve asked for advice on everything; from how to cook chicken to how to cope with the isolation of living alone in a new, foreign place, with equally foreign work opportunities.
While my internship at Green Writers Press, a small Vermont-based publisher dedicated to sustainably publishing works of environmental and social importance, has been absolutely incredible, giving me invaluable insight into the editing, publishing, and writing world, my time in Brattleboro has made me evaluate what it means to be an 18 year old in 21st century. While legally an adult, I’ve never felt more childlike than I did pushing that grocery cart uphill. And this feeling was particularly strong when I called home after my first day, in tears because I already missed my parents and was terribly lonely.
While I am so thankful that my family has always been willing to pick up that phone, it makes me wonder how ready for adulthood I really am. Calling home can feel like a cop-out, a way to deny the fact that I am now officially an adult and “supposed” to handle this all by myself.
I think that sometimes we, myself included, expect that as soon as we turn 18, we magically have the ability to take on the “real world.” That with the right to vote comes the authority to complain about our government’s structure, political activists who support Bernie by sitting on the sidelines and ridiculing Donald Trump. While we are technically old enough to claim independence and social responsibility, how often do we actually? How often do we break out from the institutional security of parental figures, colleges, or hometowns?
I know for myself, I wouldn’t even be in Brattleboro, interning and gaining this awesome, life-changing experience, if my college didn’t require it. I would definitely be (hell, I am) one of those idealistic, bright-eyed college students who think they are ready to take on and change the world, without any authority other than being 18. I had fallen into this trap just as easily as the next naïve 18 year old, and it took living 3,000 miles away for me to figure it out.
But make no mistake, being naïve is not equivalent to being incapable, to being unable to “face reality” until one graduates school or turns another arbitrary age. Just because we are “new” adults does not render us powerless.
Eighteen year olds are some of the most driven people I know. We are eager to get started in the world, eager to evoke change and educate ourselves either academically or through work experience, and we eager to have our voices heard. Age is not an innate basis for authority. It is one’s actions, experiences and the ability to accept how much knowledge is left to be gained which fuels our power as individuals.
If I, as an 18 year old, a student experiencing 18, has the authority to write this article, than 18 year olds everywhere have the authority to affect the communities they are passionate about, the communities they act in, and the communities they experience everyday.
We are not handicapped by being “only 18," but rather capable of earning new experiences, earning our own type of authority.
