By the time I graduate, I will be 22. To an 8-year-old version of me dreaming of the future or even me as a 17-year-old eagerly waiting to escape home, it was impossible for me to imagine what it would be like to be 22.
Recently, however, I found out exactly who and where I will be. I will be teaching a classroom of students only a few years younger than me. It boggles my mind. How am I going to shape the lives of 30 something kids when I’m just a kid myself?
Three years ago, college was a magical place that I had waited for my entire high school career, and behind those heavenly gates that I had heard so much about were cool college people, surely more intellectual and mature than my previous cohorts who were most amused by flicking tiny paper balls at the substitute when he was not looking.
However, overhearing phrases on the bus like: “I’m going to go home, take a nap, masturbate and watch ‘Lost,’” and reading posts on the “Overheard at Duke” Facebook group like “Girl: I come to college to learn and get a degree. Guy: I come to college to drink,” I couldn’t decide if I felt extremely fortunate that this was probably the only time in our lives that we could live these statements to the fullest, or, if I had entered some perverse nightmare of a childhood dream. As I eavesdropped on visiting prospective high school students chatting over AP exams and graduation, topics that have long faded into remnants of an adolescent past, I couldn’t help but think how much younger they would become in the next four years.
A friend of mine from home on the other hand just started seeing a broker in his mid-40s. She is 22. When I accused her of how inappropriate her relationship was, she became very defensive.
“Look, I graduated high school and have been living on my own since I was 16. I’ve been working for the past six years. College delays maturity, okay? If most people graduate from college and start living on their own when they’re 21 or 22, I should be almost 28 in real people years. I’m waiting for the rest of the boys in my generation to play catch up,” she said.
Her perspective, although a little extreme, made me think about the possibility of measuring age in “real people years.” Do employment, relationships and travelling add years, while daddy’s credit card and greek life subtract them? The expression of age in English is a strange concept. The phrase “I am 22” means nothing. How can one be a number? In Spanish, one says “I have 22 years,” a phrase which transforms age from an arbitrary number into a possession of the time that one has lived. It says, “I have accumulated this many experiences” or “I have made this many years mine.”
While students at many other public schools are must find apartments off campus and pay for bills, utilities and groceries on their own, we have the luxury of living on campus for at least three years. Yet, Edens is still too far away. While some people our age worry about where their next meal is coming from or who will look after their child tonight because they have to pull another shift, we always can swipe our cards at the Loop and add more “funny money” when we run out. We can ride in a hot air balloon and protest that it did not float high enough, attend a school-sponsored keg party and complain that it ran out of free T-shirts and get free massages because we are ironically, too stressed out. At some point, we must realize that our greatest problems are not going to range between getting the grade and getting laid.
On the bridge between youth and adulthood, as a soon to be second semester senior, this reality looms all too close. When are we young, we feel invincible. Nothing can harm us. Marriage, families, bills, retirement, social security, balding, menopause and death are stories we have heard about, that someday we will deal with, but not anytime soon. During Thanksgiving break, I was surrounded by people in their fifties, a demographic that I have not interacted with in years, and learned from their experiences.
In contrast, while at Duke, I have had the fortune of feeling for four years that I have been forever young. As a teacher, I am going to be giving back to the community and helping students with those years of knowledge I have been so privileged to have. It is this realization, this responsibility to help others with my Duke education that makes me tuck in my shirt, stand up straight and grow up.
Sue Li is a Trinity senior. This is her last column of the semester.
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