A look at the terrifying prospect of being an adult
Can I share a secret?
I’m terrified of the Real World. I mean, not the television series, although that is pretty terrifying; I’m scared of the honest-to-goodness Real World that everyone seems so excited to send us off to, like lemmings pushed over a cliff.
Nearing the end of my second university degree, I’m growing more and more fearful of this Real World, potentially poised on the other side of my graduation ceremony, ready to devour me whole.
Amidst all of these worries, costs, and time commitments, we’ll apparently be living the lives we’ve always dreamed of.
University is really just a bunch of small, comforting bubbles inside one larger, also comforting bubble. There are program bubbles, study group bubbles, work bubbles, sports team bubbles, and extracurricular bubbles. We pick one or two bubbles throughout our time here, and even if we leave a bubble, or switch between bubbles, or stretch ourselves too thin between too many bubbles, there is that larger, all-encompassing bubble waiting to catch us, protecting us from a Real World rumoured to be rife with failure and disappointment.
In university, mistakes and unfavourable outcomes are easily argued down to lesser consequences, blamed on others, or – in the worst case scenario – taken with a grain of salt as “only 10 per cent of your mark.” Not getting a job only means having to rely heavily on OSAP next year. Skipping out on a whole day of a weekly schedule to lie in bed, eat junk food, and watch Netflix is a perfectly acceptable thing to do. Handing an assignment in late – or not at all – is viable for even the weakest of excuses. In the university bubble, we can always do our work tomorrow, go to the gym tomorrow, sleep tomorrow – everything can easily be put off until tomorrow.
From what I’ve heard about the Real World, mistakes are no longer things to shrug off, attempt to excuse, or learn to live with. Mistakes in the Real World can cost someone their job, their savings, their lease, or their relationship. Being out of work in the Real World is not so easily solved – banks don’t just throw loans at people, OSAP will eventually come to collect, and a person can only put up with menial work for so long. A day of TV and sweat pants will not be an effective or acceptable excuse for putting off work – and if you do put off that work for a day, there won’t be extra time to complete within your paid working hours. A gym membership will drain its fee from your bank account – even if the plan is always to use it tomorrow, and even if you haven’t used it once.
Perhaps the most terrifying thing about the Real World is this perceived pressure to have your whole life figured out. In the Real World, it seems, we can’t stand behind a till all day making $11 an hour, because we’ll have rent, and healthcare, and groceries, and car insurance, and life insurance, and home insurance, and a myriad of other things grabbing at our wallets that we have to consider. We’ll have mortgages, and TFSAs, and RRSPs, and RESPs, and probably a few other acronyms we currently don’t understand. We’ll have to pay back all of the OSAP we spent so easily just a few years ago. Amidst all of these worries, costs, and time commitments, we’ll apparently be living the lives we’ve always dreamed of.
At the end of the day, it seems like worrying about this perceived pressure does more harm than good. In fact, maybe the idea of having a life you’ve always dreamed of is harmful, too. These are boxes put around a future that can’t yet be defined; these are constraints that contribute to the idea that it is somehow too late to start anything new.
We are all far too young to consider it too late to do anything. You could still do an entire second undergraduate degree and graduate before 26. You could travel for years – on a bank account that you minimally replenish before heading out to see the world again – and when you come back to the Real World, you could still have a 30-, 40-, 50-year-long career. You could get an amazing job right out of school in a field you thought you’d love but actually hate; you could go back to school or switch industries or pack up everything and start an alpaca farm and still have almost half of your life ahead of you. You could still be a doctor, or a fireman, or a ballerina, or an artist, or a writer, or a side show performer, or whatever it is that you wanted to be when you allowed yourself to dream crazy dreams. These past two, three, four years inside the university bubble do not define the rest of our lives. Instead, they open us up a world outside of our bubble – a world of opportunity.
The idea of popping this comforting university bubble – which magically encases a world of $2 drink nights, sleeping until noon, forgetting to worry about your grades, and procrastination – is certainly scary. I promise you, even the people who seemed to have it all figured out – the ones who won awards and internships and scholarships and acclaim – will face the same kinds of rejection and disappointment outside in the Real World that you yourself will face – and that’s okay. While rejection and disappointment will slam some doors in our faces, they’ll also open up other doors and windows; they’ll strike down walls we didn’t even realize were holding us back. When it comes down to it, our grade point averages, our majors, and the awards we did or didn’t win won’t even begin to describe who we are and who we will be.
We don’t have to allow ourselves to sit idly in the boxes we think we’ve been handed with our diplomas. We don’t have to just accept that it’s too late to change our minds or start again. It doesn’t matter how old we are, or how long we’ve spent working towards one goal, or how many years we’re worried about wasting. We’ll always be too young, with too much promise and passion and possibility ahead, and it will never be too late.