It's easy to idolize adulthood as this grandiose spectacle of achievement, the end of a long and treacherous journey of schooling and drama; the ending of an era.

But is it really all that?

Some would argue that no, in today's world being an adult is harder than ever before. Minimum wage is too low, inflation is too high, taxes and mortgages, on top of student loans and debt, keep us forever in a loop of living paycheck to paycheck just to make ends meet. Ideally, in movies or television shows, we reach adulthood, get a corporate job in the city, experiment, find love, break our hearts, find ourselves, and move into a small apartment on the lower east side with the person of our dreams and live happily ever after.

And we're so over that!

But I don't want you to get the wrong idea. I don't want you to focus on the negative.

I don't want you to think that I'm saying adulthood is the end of fun, the end of growing up, and the end of childhood. In fact, I don't think childhood ever ends. Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines childhood as, "the early period in the development of something."

In that sense of the word, adulthood is still a form, or a continuation, of childhood.

We are developing, growing, and we never really stop, do we? Reaching adulthood could come at any time and mean anything; it might be the end of school, of living at home, of working a part time job, of finally achieving a goal you set for yourself ages ago, or it might be just a feeling you get in your heart-whatever it may be, we all have our own separate definitions of what it means to be adult.

For me, I look forward to being adult. I look forward to the end, to the goal I have been working for since I was 5 years old: graduating college and graduate school. That for me will signify my entrance into adulthood. I'm genuinely excited for everything that comes with being an adult. I'm excited to learn "how to adult."

I'm excited to rent my first apartment. I'm even more excited to decorate it just the way I want it. I'm excited to go shopping for pillows and pans and crock pots. I'm excited to arrange furniture and rearrange it 100 times before I'm happy. I'm excited to get curtains that will cover the windows but still let light in, so on Sunday mornings, the most beautiful sunrise peaks through just enough. I'm excited to get a full time job in my field of study, something that I can hopefully turn into a career. I'm excited to cook, to burn both food and microwave, and to annoy my neighbors with my fire alarm going off at all hours of the night because I was craving mac and cheese right then.

I'm excited to put a down payment on a car of my own. No hand-me-down car that was a family members, but actually a car of my own choosing. I'm excited to move (possibly to the city-one cliche I'll never avoid!). I'm looking forward to finding myself a coffee shop and visiting it so often they know my order by my face.

I'm excited to get married and go on a honeymoon. I'm excited to start my life with the person I love more than anything else in the world. I'm excited to travel with him and without him, to experience the beauty of the world with his arm around my back or perhaps just the backpack there alone.

I'm excited to be a mother. I'm excited to be pregnant, to hear the "Oh's" and "Ah's" when my pregnant belly catches the eyes of another mother. I'm excited to drive my kids to their first day of preschool and kindergarten, teach them to read, teach them to love openly and with all their being, and teach them not to be afraid. I'm excited to learn how to be a mother, and I'm excited to learn how not to be a mother. I'm excited to fail, and fail gloriously, in the most dorky ways possible.

What I am most excited for is to no longer be afraid. I am terrified of ending school, of finally having to step out of that realm of my life, because at this point it's all I've ever known. I'm terrified that none of the above will happen for me. I'm terrified that I'm going to wake up and find that adulthood was the end of everything fun and exciting and momentous in my life, that I'll be 35 and alone, in a dead-end job wondering where my life went while I was too busy being terrified.

But I'm making a pact with myself now not to be afraid anymore.

So hopefully, one day in the next 10 years, you'll find me, in a small coffee shop on the lower east side, sipping coffee by the window alone, and I'll tell you that everything turned out alright.