What I learned from Young Trustees

A group of friends and I went to dinner Friday at the Washington Duke Inn to "kill some Food Points." While leaving, we were stopped by some of Duke's Trustees, including two Young Trustees. After being asked to rattle off our hometowns and majors, we were advised by the Young Trustees to enjoy college while it lasts because the real world is no fun.

We laughed politely and then exited, immediately dismissing their cliché advice. But I have since begun to ponder the recent graduates' insight.

After all, college is far from the real world, and we are far from grown up. If I were really grown up, I would not have to hesitate when asked to call a professor by his first name or offer my hand so awkwardly upon a first meeting, feeling that such a gesture is too formal. Or, just as I felt this past weekend as I was adorning myself to go to our fancy WaDuke dinner, I would not believe that I was playing dress-up in both my attire and the setting.

The bottom line is that we are what psychologists call "young adults." Most Duke students are not teenagers, as I suddenly realized when a friend of mine turned twenty a few months ago. But we are also far from being "real" adults. Do you know any adults who pay for food with what we so endearingly refer to as "Monopoly money" or complain when they attend a social function that does not offer unlimited alcohol?

College is often viewed as a time of transition from childhood to adulthood, so it seems to me that this feeling of not fitting into either category is natural. But there are times when we take our roles as both youth and adult too far.

We do what we can to be young while we still are-because it's a fact that as we grow older, we will probably no longer be able to manage on three hours of sleep or party on Thursdays. We recognize that we will one day have responsibilities that we cannot solve with an all-nighter or skip because of a hangover. Many of us have thus decided to live up our college years as much as we can. We adopt lifestyle choices that in the real world would be deemed sexually promiscuous or alcohol-dependent but are acceptable in the college world.

And then there are those of us who act like we are already in the real world, or push hard as hell to make sure we are ready once we get there. We treat every assignment as if it will determine the entire course of our lives, and in doing this, we place far too much real-world, survival-necessity value on things that are really only of the college world. As friends have often said to me in my times of stress, "Sarah, when you are on your death bed, are you honestly going to remember what you got on that one orgo test your sophomore year of college?" We have our lives all planned out, knowing when we will fill all of our major and minor requirements, which law schools we want to apply to and where we intend to live as adults. But who knows how relevant all of that will be once we encounter the real world?

Even if so many of us act exclusively as youths or adults, I would be willing to bet that the vast majority of us fit into a category that rests somewhere in the middle of the two extremes. We have our fun on the weekends but spend our finals weeks trapped in the library. We spend our "Monopoly money" like it has no end but also hold down a ten-hour-per-week job. We embrace both sides of our young adult-ness, but rarely ever do so at the same time.