It’s easy to claim adulthood the minute we turn 18 years old — it’s like we think we know everything, can do anything, and simply because of a number, are mature. But maturity is a gray area that seems to be ever changing as we grow older.
At 22, I am by no means old and definitely still have much to learn, but it’s an interesting limbo between a teen and more mature adult. There are days when I feel like a giggling, silly 18-year-old who makes juvenile comments and laughs about dumb girl gossip. And then there are days where your best friends get married or have a baby — those days make you feel mature, like somehow when you weren’t paying attention the world decided to make you a real adult.
But in the midst of the gray haze called maturity, I could not be happier floating between growing up and remaining a kid at heart. It’s a time when you can still enjoy getting excited to go to the movies with a group of girlfriends and talk about how “hot” so-and-so is. And then two days later be enveloped in a tiny baby boy who you can’t wait to spoil, watch grow up and teach all the little things only an “adoptive” auntie can.
In the past year and a half of college, I have constantly made comments about not wanting to grow up or leave college. The irony is you grow up in college. It was in my office at The Argonaut that I answered the phone when my best friend called to tell me she was engaged. It’s funny how we think we won’t grow up if we don’t leave a particular place, especially when that place is college and intended to develop a good chunk of maturity.
It turns out, growing up can be incredibly rewarding. Being a part of a wedding, holding a baby or even being the person younger classmen look to for advice. I’m not sure when this happened, but somehow I became a person others look to for advice on how to spend the remainder of their college years. It’s a new area of the grayness for me, one that never seemed to be a possibility and just kind of happened. It’s an accomplishment we don’t strive for, but is just as gratifying, if not more, than the ones we do.
It’s taken a little time and a lot of growing up when I wasn’t paying attention to make me realize getting older isn’t so bad — in fact, it’s more fun than trying to stay a kid forever.
Elizabeth Rudd can be reached at [email protected]