Emily Hoeven | Don't follow the leader

Growing Pains | How popular conceptions of adulthood steer students in the wrong direction

By Emily Hoeven 09/21/15 11:58pm

Sometimes I feel like I’m living in an artificially created world, as if I’m part of some big social experiment I don’t quite understand. The more time I spend in college, the more I’m convinced that it is its own microcosm with its own set of unique societal structures and conditions. Where else in the world can you live almost exclusively with 10,000 other people around your same age? When else in your life do you inhabit that strange gray area, somewhere on the spectrum from child to adult, where you are beginning to assert your independence but are still provided for and protected from real risk in so many ways?

It’s easy to think of college as the place you go to grow up. In college, you stop saying “I want to be an astronaut when I grow up” and start saying “I have an internship at NASA this summer.” But where, exactly, does that cutoff lie? Is it really so instantaneous, the transition from growing up to grown up?

College students want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. They want to leave their childhood behind with their first step on Locust Walk. They want to distance themselves from parental concerns, from the restrictions of childhood. In an effort to not appear naive or innocent in front of their peers, they go out of their way to become jaded as fast as they can. Because at least if you’re jaded, you understand what the world’s about. You know how it works. You’ve seen it all. You’re an adult.

We can afford to think of ourselves as adults because we don’t have anyone to tell us we aren’t. We buy into the illusion that we are independent entities, answerable to no one. Yet we live in an environment where almost everything we need is within our reach: food, housing, health care, technology, gyms, counseling services and security. We occupy a four- to five-block radius oozing convenience, and we think this is emblematic of adult life.

It is precisely because of this security so uncharacteristic of adulthood that we have the freedom to act the way we do. One of my most vivid memories from last year was going to a fraternity party the first night of New Student Orientation. There was a sea of freshmen surging over the sidewalk as far as the eye could see in either direction. I watched the police officers watching us. The resigned look in their eyes said, “We’ve seen all this before.” Because they had. They were watching a rerun they’d already seen a million times — had memorized the plot, already knew the finale. Students jostling at the door, desperate for a nod of approval from another student on an ego trip. Voluntarily walking to places where they might drink enough to black out or get their stomachs pumped. Talking in an affectedly bored tone while passing around a bong. Making out with people they’d never met before. All of this in the name of — what? Fun? Experimentation? Stress relief? Fitting in? Independence?

We learn by mimicry. We follow the examples of those that came before us. And thus we acquiesce to the system. We transition from hopscotch to beer pong. Conga lines to twerking. Are we adults yet? Isn’t this what adults do?

I am well aware of the frequently-made argument that college is the best time for experimentation. It’s not necessarily untrue. But it is also a situation where one of Newton’s laws is actually applicable: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Adulthood is not about taking shots at some party. Adulthood is about realizing that everything in life has consequences. Adulthood is about not always being able to have the freedom to do what you want. This is not some heavy-handed fatalist doctrine, but rather what it means to be accountable to and responsible for yourself.

College, the place where “Because I can” is often the rationale for decisions, does not provide an instantaneous transition to adulthood. Or maybe it does, and I’m just too naive to recognize that adultness is best asserted through alcohol, hookups and drugs. Yet I can’t help but feel that this mindset is based off of an inherently juvenile perception of maturity. A cycle of the blind leading the blind, who have never had to recognize their blindness in the first place.

EMILY HOEVEN is a College sophomore from Fremont, Calif., studying English.  Her email address is ehoeven@sas.upenn.edu. 

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