I was wondering, does college mark the end of adolescence? Is it like the real/legitimate adulthood. I was wondering as I am in grade 11 and College is sort of a year away. By the end of adolescence, I don;'t mean like taking on new responsibilities, as they come and go, but I guess the idea of youth being associated with adolescence is what the angle of my question ids.
I wouldn’t say it’s the “real/legitimate adulthood,” but you do grow a lot in college compared to high school. I definitely feel like I see and think about the world differently now and I don’t think I would really be considered an adolescent. But I wouldn’t consider myself an adult, either. It’s not quite the real world yet; there’s still a safety net, some decisions are still made for you, etc.
Many would argue that with the rise in necessity of undergraduate/graduate degrees and the increasing median age of marriage adolescence has now extended well into your 20s (or that we need to recognize “emerging adulthood” as a period between adolescence and adulthood):
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/magazine/22Adulthood-t.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24173194
Many students rely on their parents to pay part or all of their college costs, so while you’re still so dependent I wouldn’t call that “adulthood.”
I guess I’ll slightly disagree with bodangles. Yeah my parents are paying for my college but I pay all of my bills and live with my boyfriend. I live here full time and I consider my college town my home instead of where my parents live. I think of myself as an adult. I think its all about perspective.
High school = adolescence
College = Young adult
Workforce = Real adult
IT doesn’t matter what age you are.
Some 18 year olds work 40-60 hours a week and aren’t in college, therefore they are closer to being a real adult than a kid who just goes to college and doesn’t work.
It isn’t real/legitimate adulthood until you’re paying all your own bills.
Have you seen the college parties? Yeah college students are real mature…
Btw, if one does not go to college and gets a job out of high school, does that make them an adult since they are supporting themselves and paying the bills with their own money?
Well, I remember the day of move-in that I put my college town as my “current city” on my Facebook, even though I still technically live with my parents. They’re the ones who pay for my college in addition to all the bills at home and such. College is where you learn to become an adult.
Girls or boys?
Leaving aside tuition, I don’t think you’re independent/an “adult” if your parents are still paying most of your bills. I didn’t have financial support (low-income family) in college and my adolescence essentially ended before college. I worked full time in undergrad and paid everything on my own.
On the other hand, many of my friends not only had their bills paid but also received an allowance for “fun” money. No, I don’t think their adolescence was ended by college.
So yes, it can be the end but it isn’t necessarily.
No easy answer to this. I agree that I really didn’t get the financial stuff until I completely supported myself. And that’s probably true for everyone, regardless of age.
But in the tranquility if dormitory life, I found myself saddled with some personal problems that were in most ways more adult than any I’ve had to deal with in the 32 years since, the likes of which I hope never to deal with again.
Compared to all that, learning to cook and launder and pay the bills seemed pretty trivial.
It doesn’t happen that way for most people. But it could easily happen to anyone.
Your adolescence will end when it does. You could be 15 or 30. You’ll know when you get there.
Ok, how about freshman year of college?
Attending a four year residential college is a transition. You’re moving towards self sufficiency but you aren’t there yet. You will have begun to take on some of the rights/responsibilities of adulthood but for others you will have to wait. You will be held accountable as an adult for most crimes and will be freer to make your own decisions. Some freshmen will be closer to adulthood than others. They will be the ones who can function without as much assistance from other adults. Can you feed yourself, manage money, do laundry, manage transportation, schedule, negotiate, set appointments and be held accountable. These are just some of the skills necessary to be independent and move onto adulthood once you are out of college and employes. Others will function much more as adolescents. They will require adults to assist them in many of the functions an adult would do independently. To summarize adulthood is not an age or a graduation it is a transition to being independent.
For most of the college experiences we talk about on CC, our kids are adolescents until at least graduation. That’s not to say they’re children, but in the process of transitioning. How long it takes depends on the kid (and us.) Some are very mature, but I don’t think maturity alone is the factor. Adulthood a different sort of juggling than classes and personal responsibility. Enjoy youth while you can. If you’re lucky, as an adult, you’ll still be able to lean on close friends and family. But just as often (sometimes, more,) others will be leaning on you. That’s a big difference.
If you go to college from 18 to 24 and your parents pay for most of it (this doesn’t apply to most undergraduate students, for what it’s worth—a lot of them are older and more independent), your college experience probably won’t resemble your experience in the workforce when your parents aren’t paying for things, and that’s what people mean when they say you’re not a “real adult.”
Nobody finding my question about whether we are talking about a boy or girl relevant? I think there are different developmental trajectories across gender. Juz saying.
So you think college marks the end of adolescence for girls but not boys or something? How?
Unless there’s some pretty significant data pointing to one gender being financially independent before another, I don’t think there’s any reason to think there’s a difference. At least, if you ascribe to “financial independence = end of adolescence”.
College is part of a range of transitional years, not a single point marker - some students become adults in college, some will shortly after graduation, and others may never really grow up. Financial, social, and emotional independence are prerequisites but maturity is also a factor - this is probably the biggest variance - some college students can be at the level of a mature adult as early as freshman year. If you have both the maturity and independence, it’s possible to be an adult in college no matter your age - that isn’t most students though by any stretch of the imagination.
I have so many feelings about that New York Times article, most of then negative. Not being tied to a romantic partner, being in graduate school, traveling, and working temporary jobs like TFA doesn’t make you not an adult. Instead of young people delaying adulthood, I think that the meaning of young adulthood is simply changing because of a lot of economic, social and health-related reasons. Marrying and having a child is such an outdated way of measuring the transition to adulthood.
I also disagree that the marker of “real” adulthood is paying all your own bills. There are lots of adults who are financially dependent on others - what about an 85-year-old who lives with her children for health reasons? Or a 34-year-old divorcee who sleeps on a friend’s couch for a few weeks (or months) until she gets on her feet? What about a 40-year-old who still lives in his parents’ basement? Yeah, he’s not independent, but he’s still an adult! What about people who are out of work and struggling? Having financial problems doesn’t take away your adulthood. Working isn’t quite it, either; there are plenty of unemployed adults. When I was in graduate school and my brother was working a full-time job I wouldn’t have said he was more of an adult than me simply because I was still in school.
I think adulthood is more about psychological markers than specific events or financial support. Jeffrey Jensen Arnett has been doing research on modern adulthood for some decades, and his work supports that - he has a great book called Emerging Adulthood. In it, Arnett maintains that there are five distinguishing psychological features that make emerging adulthood (roughly 18 to 25 or 29) different from both adolescence and young adulthood: identity exploration, instability, self-focus, feeling in-between, and possibilities/optimism. The instability one is probably the one most based upon events/life transitions, but even then Arnett focuses more on how emerging adults feel about these commitments - often in their early to mid-twenties people don’t feel ready to commit to one marriage partner, one job, one career, one city or residence. They make constant readjustments to the Plan that they’ve often laid out for themselves.