When you're five years old, you dream of being a teenager because teenagers are grown and can do what they want.

Of course, as a teenager, you realize how untrue that is, so you want to be a fully fledged adult. Adulthood means true freedom. You can stay out as late as you want, buy what you want, eat what you want, and you don't really have to answer to anyone.

It's when you're really an adult, graduated from college and working full time, that you realize how much of a lie that was.

Adulthood isn't all fun and games. It isn't staying out until 4 a.m., doing whatever you want. It's going to bed at a decent hour (read: in bed by 10 p.m. and asleep no later than midnight) and getting up at 7 a.m. to make sure that you aren't late for your full time job.

Adulthood isn't eating anything you want, any time you want. It's more about wanting to go some place nice to eat and choosing not to in order to save money for something more important. It's about scrounging together what you have in your cupboards or your fridge to make a meal instead of giving into your Steak n' Shake cravings.

Adulthood isn't about being able to buy the newest gaming consoles and traveling across the world whenever you can. It's about saving money and making choices. It's about deciding that you truly cannot live without the newest Xbox and saving money for one. It's about deciding that you do want to travel, that you want to take a couple of weeks off and see Europe, so you stop eating out for a while. It's about learning to budget and deciding what you can and can't live without. It's about possibly giving up a few months of Netflix to move the seemingly minuscule amount of money to your savings account.

Adulthood isn't about everything being perfect. It's about making mistakes, paying a couple of bills late and learning. It's about things breaking down on you (and it always happens in groups of things that you absolutely need) and having to make alternate plans. It's about working with the people around you and building your own little community that can help you out in your rough patches, even if it's just someone to listen. It's about always making sure that you have money saved up to provide a nice little cushion if (when) something happens.

As much as adulthood has its downsides, it also has its upsides. Adulthood allows you to practice what you've spent the last four or more years studying for. It allows you the freedom to make choices you previously couldn't. It allows you to create a life for yourself, independent of your family and childhood friends. It allows you to pave your own way in this world and decide who you truly want to be.

And, as much as we all wish to again be that innocent five year old, dreaming of the day he or she would become a teenager, there's nothing more exciting than realizing that you've finally made it. You've finally become an adult and every little step is an achievement worth celebrating.