With age comes wrinkles and responsibilities

It started happening around this time last year. It began at a traffic light, in Wayne, Pennsylvania, next to the GAP.

It was a few days before my nineteenth birthday, and, to be honest, I was less than thrilled. I began to hyper-ventilate at that traffic light -- my thoughts went something like this: "Oh my god, I am turning 19, then I am going to graduate, then I am going to have to be responsible, then I will be old and then I am going to die."

My nineteenth birthday represented the beginning of my final year of being a teenager, the end of my freshman year of college, and the beginning of having to think about what to do with the rest of my life.

Over the course of my sophomore year, however, I have matured a great deal. I did not start my annual age-related breakdown until a little after 12 a.m. last Friday, during the first few minutes of my twentieth birthday. I believe that my stream of consciousness rambling about my looming death even included a few words about a career, or possibly graduate school.

I have come to view aging as a complex process and spend my time lamenting that eventually I will use wrinkle cream -- not to mention that years from now my music and clothes will seem terribly uncool. I recently had a conversation with two other friends about how, even now, our skin and bodies look different than when we were younger. And I realize that this conversation only offers a taste of things to come.

That Saturday, while walking through the Penn Bookstore, I discovered that my fears actually have an official name and an official self-help book -- both are entitled Quarterlife Crisis. I picked up this book and discovered that I am not alone, and other 20-year-olds fear this whole aging-adulthood-career thing. Apparently, many of us have anxieties about money, careers and our identities. I remain unimpressed.

Most of the Wharton and Engineering students and Pre-Med and Economics majors that I know have an impressive internship lined up for this summer. And my friends, who now have graduated, have 9-to-5 jobs, apartments and health-insurance. Yet, I do not think that my irrational anxieties are the result of my lack of an impressive internship or a lucrative career planned out for myself.

And, in theory, I am ok with this lack of planning. I trust in my own ability to find things like housing, a paying job, and money to pay water bills. Meanwhile I will try to figure out exactly what I want to do with my life -- hopefully something that might put a little money in my bank account.

This morning, I confronted the root of my fears. After spending the morning at the dentist's office (no wait, it gets better), I went over to my grandparents' house to pick up my belated birthday present and visit my '0-year-old grandmother. I planned my escape scrupulously. After chatting for a few minutes, opening up the present and picking up the extra dishes she wanted to give to me for my apartment, I mumbled something about having to go home and write a column for the school newspaper.

I did not, however, schedule in banana bread-time, looking through her jewelry to see, "what you want when I'm gone" or the 25 minutes spent in the attic looking for the aforementioned dishes. In the attic, she stopped every few seconds, picking up things and asking me if I wanted them. She found some dust-covered, tin circular music box. My grandmother's older sister's boyfriend, who died years ago, gave it to her for her twentieth birthday. "I keep running across it, but I just can't bare to give it away," she tells me.

And then, right there, I went into cardiac arrest. My future suddenly flashed before my eyes. I saw myself stumbling upon some CD, or book or bag that someone got me this year and forcing my poor granddaughter to hear all about how it came into my possession, and rambling about its sentimental value. Oh, the joys of growing up.

I may not know what the future holds for me, but I do know that one of these days I will have to face the fact that I am getting older. But despite having all of these pre-professionals and soon-to-be real professionals around me, I am not scared because I do not have some master, money-making plan. The idea of a job or the declining economy does not have me crying at stop lights, or writing long, late night emails. Like many of us, I spend most of my time in college ignoring, as best as I possibly can, the fact that this whole period in my life is temporary and fragile.

My most recent birthday marked my transition out of my teenage years. It made me actually think about the fact that college is halfway over, and soon my life will change drastically. The experience is unpleasant, and I suggest that all of you attempt to avoid it.

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