It's funny how sometimes parents scare you when they're trying to comfort you, and comfort you when they're trying to scare you. I'll never forget my father trying to comfort me over a grandparent's death by assuring me that everyone dies eventually, or my mother trying to ease the pain of a breakup by saying that most people travel long, painful courses of romantic trial and error. But recently, in an effort to scare me, my father actually assuaged one of the greatest fears of any rational college student: becoming a grownup.
I was out to dinner with my parents, when my father gleefully removed a newspaper clipping from his pocket, proudly presenting it to me and my mother. The piece referred to a University of Chicago study that said most Americans believe adulthood begins at age 26 and cited the apparent trend of more 20-somethings moving back in with their parents. My father read the article aloud as though it was a victory speech for his generation's triumph over mine.
But my reaction wasn't quite what he was expecting.
\26? Screw getting a job and my own apartment. I've got another three and a half years of childhood! Break out the feety pajamas!""
My parents looked less than thrilled with my response, but the idea that college students reach adulthood at graduation is absurd. No one tells this to incoming freshmen, but college is essentially just a long string of transitions. We learn and grow at school by spending four or five years regularly segueing to new interests, new sets of friends and new living arrangements.
The most difficult transitions in college life are the first and last. While few things are more intimidating than entering college for the first time, there is perhaps nothing at all more daunting than the prospect of graduating and moving into adulthood. That's why so many people enter grad school with no sense of enthusiasm. It's a way of delaying the seemingly inevitable.
It is understandable then that the most common fear of college seniors is about what comes next. Upperclassmen freak out about future careers and responsibilities, and in doing so, let their remaining college days fly away in a gust of unnecessary stress. It's crazy to think that we cross some threshold into maturity at 22 or 23 just because it's our last year of college. God save us if the last boundary from adulthood truly is a passing grade in food science or intermediate tennis.
Perhaps thinking of some later age as a gateway point is a good idea. Our first jobs, apartments and relationships out of college most likely won't be our last. So why don't we embrace that discomforting sense of trial and error instead of the even more frightening expectation that we should be finished products as soon as we move the tassel from one side of our graduation cap to the other? Our early 20s can be a time to figure out exactly how we're not mature. So what if I can't handle my money responsibly or unhook a bra? I have at least three and a half years to figure it out.
College is a time of growth and transitions, but it isn't the end of them. Wasting youth on the fear of age is stupid when we have so much time to figure things out and so little time in college.
Especially when we can figure things out without paying for our own places.
Thanks for sharing, Dad.
Amos' column runs every Thursday in The Daily Cardinal. He can be reached at AmosAP@hotmail.com
