Am I an adult?

It feels like a lifetime since I last wrote a blog post. Though, I’m sure the concept of time is slipping from us all as we stay indoors and relive each day like the last. Wake up near to the afternoon, complain about lectures, begrudgingly attend tutorials, and do the damn readings well into the night (or shall I say morning?)

Since the last blog post, I had to change laptops as my previous one failed me and sent me into a mental breakdown. This laptop (which I continue to say is a temporary fix) is no better and loves to mess up during zooms, allowing all my classmates to witness further meltdowns, or at least hear one of my many whispers of ‘no not again.’

It’s more than halfway through the second semester and I feel that the identity of a university student has only begun to sink in. I feel childish to ever refer back to my high school days, feeling that bringing it up means I’ve peaked in high school. It’s strange when you feel like a child but are treated like an adult. Can you feel like an adult when you’re still living with your parents?

I feel that first year of uni (or at least the first year out of high school) is a time of transition and discovery into what kind of person you want to be. For the first time you’re doing something/ a course that you actually want to do, and you’re gaining knowledge on things you actually want to know.

This transition into ‘adulting’, I guess you can say, hit me hard on the Friday morning tutorial for my Media Writing class.

I need to write a hard news story. In my Friday morning tutorial, my tutor told us to suddenly pitch a story to her and I, in my sleepy state, scrambled to find the best story possible, hoping that I wouldn’t get critiqued too much for it. The opposite happened – she loved the idea. I should be ecstatic about that, but it hit me that I have to actually go and pester real and busy people to interview. I felt so adolescent and unqualified and the very real question of ‘what if no one wants to be interviewed by a student? It won’t get them exposure or anything.’ After finishing a full Mango Tango smoothie, courtesy of Boost Juice, I braced myself for rejection and for endless pestering for at least one interview.

Somehow I didn’t need to pester them as much as I thought and tomorrow I will be calling them. While I thought I was basically the master of Zoom meetings, that nagging feeling of being unqualified and childish is making me nervous again. Quarantine has reduced my social battery and I spent all of it when I emailed a number of people who gave me leads to a good interviewee.

It’s like when you need to book a doctor’s appointment. I don’t want to do that, it’s just too adult for me. I’m expected to be in charge of my life?

Back to sipping my (new) Mango Tango smoothie.

What about you? Do you feel like an adult yet? More importantly, do you have tips for me in pretending to be one?