How to Be A Grown-Up
Hint: It’s not about kids, marriage, education, or debt.
It’s fall, which means that on top of everything turning pumpkin flavored, there’s a new crop of interns starting at my school.
Each year we get a handful of college graduates who show up, fresh-faced with a newly minted college diploma, ready to take on the world — as soon as they figure out how to fill out their W-2s and use the washing machines at the laundromat. They volunteer to work at my school for one year in exchange for a very low wage, some debt forgiveness, and the experience of working side by side with experienced professionals.
I love the interns, I do. I remember being in my early 20s, full of confidence despite my total lack of experience. Like them, I expected to move mountains. Like them, I thought I could bend the world to my will instead of the other way around.
But unlike them, I don’t remember feeling like there was an uncrossable chasm between me and the adult world.
Over the last few years, the interns have started turning the word ‘adult’ into a verb and it drives me crazy:
“Oooh, I’m not adulting very well right now, am I?”
“I adulted the shit out of that phone call!”
