One of my favorite lines from War and Peace is Tolstoy’s first description of Natasha. In the midst of a stuffy adult conversation, children burst into the room playing the Russian equivalent of tag. Natasha is described as being, “just at that charming age when a girl is no longer a child, though the child is not yet a young woman.”
This line is great because we can all remember a time when we have felt in that “in-between” state where we are too old to play games with our younger siblings and too old to converse with the “grown-ups.” The games and toys of our youth (even Playmobil, Jack) no longer appeal to us and grown-ups are just plain boring.
This awkward “in-between” state is most evident in the typical American undergraduate student. When I entered college I was 17 years old, and according to the law (excepting the wizarding world) not an adult. When I graduated college, I was 21 years old, a legal adult in all 50 states. So what happened in college? What magical transformation took place in those four years that made me an adult and no longer a child?
Perhaps a growing sense of independence. Away from Mom and Dad, the typical college student has a lot more freedom than he or she is used to. Perhaps it was the accelerated growth of critical thinking. I don’t know about the rest of you, but when I came to college I couldn’t evaluate a text at all (just memorize it). After PLS, I feel like I could critique an argument with the best of ‘em (you guys).
I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there was a definite feeling after we graduated that we were not kids anymore. It was time for us to grow up and face the music. Get a job. Get a place. Go to grad school. These are what we were told we had to do in order to “grow up.” Now that you have done these things, do any of you feel like a “grown-up?” Do you feel like an “adult?” Have you left boyhood or girlhood behind and exchanged it for manhood or womanhood? (What makes a man, a man and a woman, a woman could be a whole ‘nother pensees)
I only ask this because every weekday I see over 60 students who see me as just as much a “grown-up” as their other teachers. A part of me agrees with them because I have “put away childish things” like St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 13:11. Another part of me says no I’m still not quite a grown up yet. Perhaps this “in-between” feeling is recurring throughout life, something we feel whenever the nostalgia for things past collides with the pressure to grow up.
So I ask you again – Are you a grown up?
-Conor
This line is great because we can all remember a time when we have felt in that “in-between” state where we are too old to play games with our younger siblings and too old to converse with the “grown-ups.” The games and toys of our youth (even Playmobil, Jack) no longer appeal to us and grown-ups are just plain boring.
This awkward “in-between” state is most evident in the typical American undergraduate student. When I entered college I was 17 years old, and according to the law (excepting the wizarding world) not an adult. When I graduated college, I was 21 years old, a legal adult in all 50 states. So what happened in college? What magical transformation took place in those four years that made me an adult and no longer a child?
Perhaps a growing sense of independence. Away from Mom and Dad, the typical college student has a lot more freedom than he or she is used to. Perhaps it was the accelerated growth of critical thinking. I don’t know about the rest of you, but when I came to college I couldn’t evaluate a text at all (just memorize it). After PLS, I feel like I could critique an argument with the best of ‘em (you guys).
I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there was a definite feeling after we graduated that we were not kids anymore. It was time for us to grow up and face the music. Get a job. Get a place. Go to grad school. These are what we were told we had to do in order to “grow up.” Now that you have done these things, do any of you feel like a “grown-up?” Do you feel like an “adult?” Have you left boyhood or girlhood behind and exchanged it for manhood or womanhood? (What makes a man, a man and a woman, a woman could be a whole ‘nother pensees)
I only ask this because every weekday I see over 60 students who see me as just as much a “grown-up” as their other teachers. A part of me agrees with them because I have “put away childish things” like St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 13:11. Another part of me says no I’m still not quite a grown up yet. Perhaps this “in-between” feeling is recurring throughout life, something we feel whenever the nostalgia for things past collides with the pressure to grow up.
So I ask you again – Are you a grown up?
-Conor
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