Kallen Hansen | The Chronicle
Face it – you are still a kid. You are most likely in high school, you are most likely a legal minor and you are most likely a dependent on someone’s tax returns. But even if none of those things apply to you, you are still living life for the first time. You are still making mistakes and learning from them. You are still growing up. And that beautiful process, under no circumstances, should ever be rushed.
When I was in elementary school, I hated it when I saw my peers get into relationships, wear makeup and talk about sex so openly in hopes of seeming “cool” or more knowledgeable about the world around them than all their “innocent” and inferior classmates.
Many of the sad truths I know, I learned on the bus.
All I wanted to do was play with my Descendants Barbie dolls and listen to Disney songs. But all I could focus on was the faces around me, trying their best to be as old as possible. Ironically, I always saw it as immature. Whether that was me trying to defend my need to live in my childhood a little longer, or me genuinely seeing it as it is, I always told myself that being ‘mature’ doesn’t mean forcing yourself to grow up.
Even now, I find myself annoyed when I find full LinkedIn pages of people in my math class, or when someone younger than me rolls their eyes and tells me they are “too old for Prom”. There is nothing wrong with letting the transition into adulthood happen on its own, and enjoying the moments that are left behind from childhood too. From time to time (although not as often as I once did), I still play with my Descendants Barbie Dolls and listen to Disney songs.
Yes, it’s important to prepare for your future. It’s important to move on from one toy to the next. But too often does this “Toy Story 3 Process” become a race. It was never a race, and even if it was, you were never winning by bragging about your shiny new resume-padding internship you could lose in a day.
I have fallen victim to the “need for adulting” speed too. I worked out my entire four-year plan in middle school. Spoiler alert: I did not take APUSH, AP Calculus BC, or AP Literature & Composition. I realized that by taking all of those classes, I wouldn’t get to enjoy the few years left I have under the roof I have slept under for almost my entire life. It might have been “grown up” to challenge myself in that way, but considering my needs and wants, it would not have been the mature choice for me.
Mike Edwards of Jesus Jones, a popular British alternative rock band, once sang, “right here, right now, there is no other place, I wanna be.” Even as an arguable “one-hit-wonder”, Jesus Jones was on to something. Live in the moment. Live as the version of yourself you are now, not who you will be in 20 years. I am almost 18 and in college, but I am still a daughter, I am still a sister and I am still a kid. And I adore it.
