As I move ever closer to graduation, I can't help but begin to come up with several questions and comments about adulthood.

Yes, I am an adult, and have been legally so for almost four years. But I think I speak for many young people when I say that I don't know when I'll actually feel like one.

Sure, I've been living on my own for a few years now (always with a roommate, of course). I've had to make my own appointments, put in the hours at work to pay my own bills, be responsible for feeding myself, all while being a full-time student.

This year alone I think I have done A LOT of growing up. I'm halfway through my senior year of college, will be a student teacher next semester, figured out who I am as a person, and got engaged. Oh, and I've managed to keep a house plant alive for a year and a half.

So why do I still feel like such a kid?

In the eyes of my family, I think I'll always kind of be a kid. Most of my cousins are in their late twenties or early thirties, so they have been accepted as real adults.

Family gatherings are still much the same for me. For many of my numerous aunts, uncles, and cousins, Christmas is one of the two or three times they see me in a year. So they resort to the usual questions that would make sense to ask me: How's school going? Are you working anywhere? How is living with your brother going? What's your major again?

There is nothing wrong with these questions, of course. And maybe this year will be different, now that there is a wedding coming up. Maybe talking about this with my adult family members will give me a taste of what being a real grow-up is like.

I guess my biggest question is when real life will start to actually feel like real life to me. How do you know when you've reached peak adulthood? Is it when you get married? Start working a serious full-time job? Have kids?

I really don't know.

I do know plenty of people who have these things and are definitely not mature adults. I also have friends my age who are graduating, getting married, and starting their careers already. Maybe I'm just feeling left behind.

But I am left with the hope that my college graduation is just one short semester away. A few more months until my life changes in a very big way.

Maybe the fact that I have known nothing in life except how to be a student for the last sixteen or so years. This has been my main defining quality, and it might take me a while to adjust to becoming something other than a student.

I don't know exactly where the next few years will take me, but I am left with the hope that I will continue to grow and learn as an adult-in-training.