How To Become An Adult: There Are No Set Rules For Life

It’s crazy that I don’t have enough fingers to count how many people from my year group in secondary school are now pregnant and/or engaged. I honestly don’t understand how all this is happening. Less than two years ago I remember sitting in my sixth form study room rolling my eyes at one girl for bragging about how drunk she got one night, and how she couldn’t wait to go to Maga in the summer. She’s now a mother (a great one at that) and is totally mature, handling her shit as well as a thirty-something year old who’s been in a stable marriage and a stable job for a decade. Me on the other hand…here I am in my pyjamas, fretting over essay deadlines, trying to decide whether or not I want to go out clubbing for the second time this week, and eating my Tesco Everyday Value dinner out of the saucepan I cooked it in. Did choosing to go to university mess up my personal maturing process? Throughout school and sixth form I was told to go to university to get a good education, so I could have a good job and have an all-round successful life. Yet it seems that I’m lagging behind in life, concentrating on insignificant details and wasting cash on getting wasted. It’s as if I’m taking the long way around becoming an adult. In my eyes I’m not wasting my life – hell, I’ve got plans upon plans upon plans! I’ve recently started pricing up my summer trip to Europe (Germany, Czech Republic, Poland – I’ll see you soon!), and realised that I might actually need to call up my boss to fund the aforementioned trip, and I’ve got my exam dates penned in on my calendar…but despite all these plans, my life is in fact stagnant. On pause. Hindered. But that doesn’t mean that I’m failing in life. These three years at university are in fact an opportunity to mess up, plan epic trips, drink too much, make new friends and not give a crap about the future. Sure, it would be unwise to not contemplate it in the slightest, but to compare myself to these ‘established’ girls I once knew is just as unwise. They’re probably thinking the same thing, only in the backwards format! I bet they struggle with the nappy changing, the wedding plans, the responsibility and so on – and that’s just life for you! The process of becoming an adult is different for everyone, and that is okay. There is no tried-and-tested path that everyone agrees on, no matter how hard you look for one. The only wrong path is to mope around and wait for everything to fall into place. Whether you’re pregnant, engaged, a university student, middle aged…you just have to make the most of your current situation. Go out, make plans, enjoy other peoples’ company, have a laugh…what are you waiting for?