COLUMN Musings and Mishaps

Author: Lindsey Whitton

At the end of the summer, my friend made a list of the reasons why she is getting old. She sends out Christmas cards, she always has a running "To Do" list, her best friend just got engaged, and — the real clincher — she was invited to a dinner party and asked to bring a casserole. "When had adulthood sneaked up behind us?" she asked me, in a panic, upon returning to Middlebury. "When do we stop being teenagers and start acting like our parents?"
While at Middlebury, our rapid maturation often goes unnoticed as we get caught up in college life. At school, I never wonder whether I am an adult or a child — I am content to simply be a college student, a developmental stage in and of itself. I do college-student things, like order pizza at 2 a.m., meet with my adviser, listen to world-class speakers for free and spend hours fiercely debating issues I knew nothing about three days before. The college experience, I'm told, is a privileged bridge from childhood to adulthood. While I'm crossing, I never consider which side I'm on.
As soon as I leave Middlebury for vacation, however, I realize everyone else has begun to change the way they interact with me. Most of the symptoms are subtle: the occasional dinner-party invitation addressed to my parents and me, politicians courting my vote through the mail, people on the train out of New York City asking me what I do. Sometimes, however, I am slapped across the face with shocking assumptions of my maturity, like when a crowd of people admiring my little cousin began to compliment me on how much she looks like her mommy.
And, like my friend, I am beginning to notice surprisingly grown-up personal behavior. My favorite thing to do in the morning is to have a cup of coffee and to read the newspaper, my ideal Friday night would be candlelight and dinner and the other night, while I was home for fall break, I fell asleep folding laundry and watching "Law and Order."
None of this, however, is an earth-shaking revelation. Everyone eventually realizes that they are getting older and growing closer to growing up. The best part about college is that for four years we are free to pick and choose what elements of childhood we want to hold onto and what elements of adulthood we want to adopt. Although I may be acting more like my parents, I am happily years away from most of their responsibilities.
After all, I may now want to start my day with coffee and The New York Times, but I'm usually reading the e-mail edition and I still don't like to wake up until 11:30 a.m.