In June 2016, I reached a milestone that I had spent my entire life working toward: graduating from high school. With the toss of a cap and a step down an aisle, a new chapter of my life would begin. I would leave behind all the people who mistreated me and the things that were bad for me. I could be my own person, for seemingly the first time in my life. I wanted to desperately to leave and be on my own, yet when I got there I realized it was not nearly as fun or as glamorous as I envisioned it to be.
Movies and television programs since the beginning of time have painted college as this glorious pinnacle of young adulthood; the best few years of your life. Life is filled with fun and friends and parties, and your biggest struggle is simply what to do next. There aren’t any worries, and you get to do whatever you want while taking a step towards the next portion of your life. And, even while knowing in the back of my mind that that wasn’t quite true, it was what I believed I was heading towards when I packed up for Charlottesville.
College was, surprisingly, not all fun and games. A good majority of my time was dedicated to studying and making sure I didn’t fail my classes. Not exactly the glitz-and-glam lifestyle that had been advertised. The work, eat, and sleep routine much more resembled that of an adult than that of a recent high school graduate. Those weren’t the changes I expect, but they were what I was given.
The biggest change that came with college was being on my own. And for me, that was a good thing. I could do my own thing, my own routine, and not worry that huge differences in opinions with my parents would severely impact my daily life. But all it really did was make me realize that I am not equipped just yet to go out into the real world. Once ripped away from my parents and the comfort of my own home, I was able to see how little I truly knew how to do. I have a lack of practical skills; the only thing I really know how to cook is noodles. I still have to call and ask my parents how to do basically everything. And as someone who used to think of herself as pretty independent, that was hard for me to come to terms with.
And with the whole being thrown into the world on your own with no skills to help you comes the fact that I’m expected to act like an adult now. High school handled us with kid gloves and tried to protect us from the outside world. But the second I left high school, the gloves were dropped and I was immediately thrust into the world with little knowledge of what I was supposed to do or how I was supposed to do it. I was expected to be able to act like a fully capable, high-functioning adult all of a sudden. And I thought, “With what preparation?”
I’m definitely not a kid anymore, but I don’t quite feel like a real adult just yet. I haven’t done enough adulting. I don’t have an adult job, I’m still living with my parents during summers and breaks, I don’t pay for as much as I should, I rely on my parents more than I’d like to, and I have absolutely no clue what I’m going to do with myself after college. I have time to figure it out, as college is a weird sort of inbetween place of being a kid and an adult that gives you that luxury, but the uncertainty hangs over my head like a dark cloud. I wait patiently for the day that everything clicks and I finally feel like a proper adult, but I fear in the back of my mind that that day may never come. Will I ever think of myself as responsible enough to be a real adult? Will I ever do anything right? It’s too soon to tell at this point, but for now I’m just going to enjoy this weird in between stage of life.
