If you are in college clicking on this link, you are probably expecting some sappy relationship advice or a compilation of silly memes. Well...surprise! It’s even better! This is about why “adulting” is in and why everyone is talking about it. Everyone, and I truly mean everyone, will have to “adult” at some point in his or her life. Some of us started “adulting” at an early age while our parents were busy working long shifts at the hospital, on business trips, or just simply not available. Others are still having Mommy and Daddy take care of every want and need they have. As for me, I am a college student who is still learning all there is to know about becoming an adult.
HELLO FREEDOM! Walking into our first place, we're feeling pretty cool. We can’t help but think about all of the memories we’re about to make. We get to start fresh! We have our own place without parents, without RAs, and most importantly without rules (except ridiculous trash violations). Let's be honest, we can even have thirty of our closest friends over at 11:30 on a Tuesday night for no reason! In fact, we can do whatever we want! Or so we think. We assume that we’re going to have all of the time in the world to party, eat out and decorate our place, just like it came out of Pinterest. But let’s face the cold hearted truth: Living on our own is hard and downright expensive.
We are quick to assume that our parents, who are the most wonderful people we know, will furnish our place and make it look fabulous. We become giddy just thinking about how perfect it will look with the furniture, decorations, and 50 pairs of shoes that can totally (not) fit in our closet. Boy, are we mistaken. They taught us, first hand as college students, to take advantage of Craigslist. Yes, I really just said Craigslist, and no, it is not all sold by creepy people trying to kill us (but I repeat DO NOT go alone.) A big part of “adulting” as a college student involves refreshing the Craigslist page every hour to find the perfect couch or table. Not only will we be proud of ourselves for buying and picking it out, but also appreciative after how big of a STRUGGLE it was to find. Not to mention, we can't forget about the cute boys who help move it in for us (in my opinion, the best part).
Speaking of cute boys, personally, after living on my own and having to cook my own food, I figured out why they order Jimmy Johns and Dominos every meal! Cooking is a PAIN...especially when we’re not naturally skilled at it and somehow always manage to even burn scrambled eggs. The first couple of weeks are difficult. Walking through the grocery store for the first time while trying to come up with meals we would normally eat at home may sound easy, but once we are physically there, we realize we have absolutely no idea where to begin. We buy too much and yet not enough. We try to buy healthy meals and snacks, but end up with the half-pound bag of sour gummy worms in our shopping cart. Of course, only to realize that by the time we finish checking out, we’ve spent over one hundred dollars easily.
So we're new adults and we have our groceries but there's no way it'd be "adulting" without the fire alarm going off the first time we try to cook a nice, homemade meal on our own. Shortly thereafter, realizing that we don’t have the right cooking utensils to finish what we are attempting to make. Oh, did I mention having to do our laundry and tidying up, on top of all the cooking? Let's be real, the worst part is having to clean up the horrible mess we made while cooking after eating our sub par meal. Seriously, no wonder the guys just order in all the time.
Just when we think that we’re finally “adulting” correctly and we start to feel slightly encouraged about everything we have accomplished, something else always seems to go wrong. Silly college students, we thought just because we took our intro classes to accounting and economics that bills are going to be a piece of cake. Well . . . newsflash!!! Bills are not going to pay themselves. Nothing is better than receiving an alarming call from our tool bag of a leasing manager saying we’re late paying our bills and we’re about to be evicted. In addition to being threatened with eviction, they also love to mention that they have a video of our drunk-idiot friend going out the emergency exit. Thinking it's no biggy, the leasing managers throws in the "it CLEARLY states 'EMERGENCY EXIT $500 fine when opened'" and that we have no choice but to pay that cute little fine in seven days; and don’t even forget about utilities! Having to wait hours after hours for the cable guy to come while all of your friends are out at your favorite restaurant is quite the introduction to “adulting” and the feeling of missing out on life.
“Adulting” isn’t exactly as much of a walk in the park as we thought, but of course as cheesy as it sounds, we wouldn’t trade the memories we have made learning from our mistakes for anything. Then again, what are parents for but to pester them with everything that we don’t know how to do? We call our mom and dad almost a trillion times asking for advice on how to cook chicken or get the stain out of our favorite white tee. The stories of us bawling to our mom about doing ten pounds of dishes or not having a sharp enough knife to cut a lemon are priceless memories that we will look back on when our kids are in the same boat. Every single hardship is a lesson that makes everything seem all worth it in the end. All in all, we wouldn’t trade those hardships or the memories we’ve made with our roomies for anything. Not only have we learned to “adult” together, but we’ve laughed, cried, and completely screamed: In the wise words of Elle Woods . . .
