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The struggle between adolescence and adulthood

The+struggle+between+adolescence+and+adulthood

Growing up is confusing, terrifying and downright exciting all wrapped up into one.
You live your teen years under the safe supervision of your parents. Then, if you’re lucky, you’re thrown into what undoubtedly will be the wildest ride of your 20s: college.
Now with great fun comes great responsibility and unfortunately, being 20 seems to bring more of the latter.
Being 20 years old is like a double-sided sword. Like any other respectable adult, I am expected to pay my bills, go to school, work a job and take care of myself, but I can’t get into the more strict bars my friends of age can go to on Friday nights.
Am I supposed to spend my Friday nights eating paste and tucking myself in at 8 p.m. or am I supposed to numb the pain with the endless amount of homework received from my professors and attempting to figure out how to pay my taxes?
At 20, you are expected to handle all of these mature concepts with ease, but you can’t be trusted to have a sip of alcohol with friends in public.
I find that at the modest age of 20, authority figures utilize my age of limbo to their advantage. They claim that I am an adult, and I should know better than to turn my driveway into a slip ‘n slide. Then they’ll tell me, “No Cait, you in fact cannot drive to Mexico this weekend with your friends, you are only a 20-year-old kid and someone will try to take advantage of you.” So you can imagine my state of confusion concerning my age.
Am I an adult or am I kid? Should I be spending my Friday nights looking into shuffleboard leagues to join while my friends are at the bar? Or should I be deciding which swing on the playground to go on by deciphering which one has the optimum amount of height and sufficient amount of space to jump off from?
These are just some of life’s many pressing questions. Instead of being treated as the hybrid version of an adult, I believe 20 year olds should be taken more seriously.
After all, if I can be trusted to pay my bills on time and the government is allowed to take taxes from my paycheck, then maybe I could be trusted in stimulating the economy in the form of a bar tab that includes something stronger than a Shirley Temple every once and a while.

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    Cait SchallSep 9, 2014 at 12:28 pm

    Love you! I’ll have another article out tomorrow so keep an eye out. Miss you<3

    Reply