It made me wonder about my reluctance and the hesitance of our generation to enter into a sort of conventional adulthood and responsibility.

A lot of the skaters there were crazily talented, skating backward and executing spin-jumps whose names I won’t pretend to know. On top of their ability to do things I would never dream of being able to do on a set of wheels (like getting around the rink without stumbling or falling down completely), some of the people there actually had their skates tricked out with striped laces, Nike Air shoes and even drag-racing under-lights. The whole Friday night skating thing obviously wasn’t something they did every once in a while, but, rather, they had made circling that track over and over again into a lifestyle.

In the same way, I know from my own experience that I’m terrified to think about the concept of stepping into adulthood (and by adulthood I mean the Southern Illinois version I’ve been raised with: job, house, marriage, kids, etc.). The thought of taking on such responsibility terrifies me, which I think seems to be pervasive in our generation. We have so many things to divert us from entering into that situation, though, that we can just hop into the rink and skate, going nowhere but in a circle. This, in turn, becomes a lifestyle, and not just a diversion on our way out of adolescence.

For the most part, people are getting married later, having children later, contenting themselves with living a lifestyle that for a long time before us would have been considered, for the most part, a kind of perpetual adolescence. It’s like we’ve created the time of deferral, pushing back what has been taken as normal for so long, so we can do what we want and maybe not have to worry about going out completely on our own or gaining financial independence from our parents.

When I say that, I don’t necessarily mean it is a bad thing. I know for some weird reason, I have a tendency to get lost in thought when I’m skating. Maybe it’s the cyclical nature or something? Either way, though, there’s something to be said about this period of deferral in which many of my older friends have found themselves. Maybe it helps younger people find out who they are before they have to jump into the real world (although I’ve always considered everything in my life to be as real as the world can be).

I don’t pretend to have the answers. All I know is that when my dad and my grandpa were my age, they were married, owned a house and possibly had a child on the way (once again, that could be Southern Illinois, but maybe not). Even the thought of marriage terrifies me, and I can’t imagine having such a link to another person. I just want to be able to find myself before anything else.

I guess as far as I’m concerned, I am content that I have this rink that I can cycle through for a while and learn a little bit more about myself. We’ll all unlace our skates when we’re ready, but in the meantime, I think I’ll worry about keeping my balance here and avoiding any collisions with the guy turning a triple axel over there.

Gabe is a freshman in Arts & Sciences. He can be reached via e-mail at gcralley@gmail.com.

The second milestone occurred Sunday: I accepted my mom’s Facebook friend request.

It’s been sitting idly on my requests page for months now, as I have been reluctant either to accept or reject it. Today I finally caved.

Some of you may be fervently shaking your heads now, appalled that I would ever allow a parent into my online world, but most are probably wondering what the big deal is. The significance is two-fold.

First, my mom is by training both a lawyer and a journalist, which combined have endowed her with a superhuman ability to extract information from even the most reluctant of sources and sketchiest of details. I figured that if I wanted to maintain some modicum of privacy, I should not provide her with unrestricted access to a constant stream of electronic updates about my daily activities.

Which brings me to my second point: I do not really want anyone following each of those updates and activities. That sounds counterintuitive—to post something on to the World Wide Web means nothing if not to place it in the public sphere—but upon further reflection, I think most of you will probably admit to the same paradoxical desire.

Now let me clarify. I have no expectation of privacy when I post something on Facebook, and each individual post is meant to be read. Collectively, however, they paint a more complete and personal portrait of my life, and anyone who followed each and every update would be considered a stalker, albeit of the anonymous, and more innocuous, Facebook variety.

Still, I feel comfortable on Facebook because I feel confident that no one really cares enough to follow every single detail of my online life. Even if I’m wrong, no one would comment on every post or ask questions about people they do not know and remarks they do not understand. No one, that is, except my mother.

Our parents’ generation is not native to social networking and therefore cannot grasp this fundamental principle of online etiquette: Even though something may be posted where the entire world can see it, it is not always socially acceptable to read it.

Facebook users of our age would be horrified to broadcast exactly whose pictures they have viewed or to let slip into offline conversation a tidbit gleaned accidentally from their News Feed. The grown-ups, on the other hand, fail to understand this peculiar yet wholly widespread Millennial phenomenon.

And yet, I accepted the request. I decided that if my little brother can become an adult, my adult parents could learn to use Facebook like their children. After all, my brother has a Facebook page too now (yup, Facebook has in fact spread to middle school), monitored by my mother’s News Feed, and while it is cluttered with countless annoying quizzes, there are no parental comments. More importantly, I also decided that I could grow up enough to accept the occasional intrusions and motherly questions.

So Mom, I will accept your online friendship…on a trial basis, to be made permanent only after a period of good Facebook behavior. If it doesn’t work out, it’s OK—I promise not to unfriend you offline.

Eve is a junior in Arts & Sciences. She can be reached via e-mail at elsambor@wustl.edu.

(Mike Hirshon | Student Life)

Our plans, however, unwound into a mildly disgruntling but still quite exciting journey, us having found an adult block party in the middle of Euclid, complete with a dancing deck of cards and many women (and men) dressed up as tawdry-looking Disney characters. Because of all the drunken debauchery, I would assume, no one within a three-block radius would open their doors to a bunch of poor, pathetic college students. Still, it was all too funny to see.

Decked in a scarf and pants about five sizes too small for me, I realized that no one truly ever grows up.

Life has a tendency to put restrictions on us as we grow older: Play nicely with others, go to college, pay your own cell phone bill, get a good job, stop picking your nose. The list goes on, and we wrap ourselves in these costumes of “adults,” responsible, caring, good citizens who contribute to the greater good, and try our hardest to keep order, peace and reverence and not hit our cousin Jimmy when he tries to steal our Tonka trucks.

Adulthood is an expectation that has afflicted generations and generations before us as we maintain propriety rather than express how we truly feel. Oftentimes, it isn’t adult-like to act silly and let loose. We become so caught up in what we have to do that we forget who we used to be; we’ll put on the suit or the corporate mask or the soccer-mom wig, and when we finally do look at ourselves in the mirror, we don’t even know what is staring back at us.

The block party, though, is proof that given an opportunity, the child in us will get out. All it takes is one occasion, one little chance to revert back to adolescence, or even childhood, and adults will jump at the opportunity, whether responsibly or irresponsibly.

If adulthood is so uncomfortable, why do we bother trying to perform as adults? I don’t mean to say that we should just let everything fall into anarchy, and I know we do have to behave responsibly, but why is there so much tension in the world? Why do we kill ourselves putting on this image of some stereotype that is generations old? We’re all trying to do well in school or in our jobs so we can make a better life for ourselves, yes, but if we don’t take a second to look around—past the textbooks and the minivans and the taxes—we will miss what life is about.

It is more than just this performance starring the over-18 crowd. From time to time, we need to look back and see where we came from. We need to laugh, enjoy ourselves and be who we are, free from worries about what anyone else will think.

I can tell you from experience that some pants are just too tight to wear and should not be seen on your body or mine. Step out from your imposed adulthood and seriousness, and I think you’ll find that it’s much easier to breathe.

The answer to the first question—whether we are adults—is relatively straightforward, from my point of view, for most of us. We can quibble about the exact definition of “adult,” but the bottom line is that, outside a few small areas (I manage to cook my own food, somehow), I am entirely dependent on the support of my parents. From my point of view, this means that there is no way that I can claim to be a full adult. And as I am a senior, and quickly see my graduation date approaching, I must admit that I am also not eager to make that claim just yet.

The answer to the second question—whether we should be treated as adults—is, in my view, not identical to the answer to the first question, and slightly more complex. We may not be full adults, but does this mean that we should not try to conduct ourselves as if we were? Think about the implications of the reverse claim. Should college students really not act as if they were responsible for their actions? Should they not act as if they can make a difference in this world, or, at the very least, as if what they did mattered? I would hope that we would all try to act as if we were full members of this society, with the same responsibilities toward ourselves and toward the people and the world around us that anyone else has. I cannot imagine another way to live one’s life that could remotely be considered ethical.

And outside the ethical implications of not treating students like adults, there is an even more serious social-justice aspect to the question. While we may argue about what it actually means to be an adult, the law has a much simpler definition. In the United States, at the age of 18, everyone is given the rights and responsibilities of the citizen, regardless of whether they are in college or not. In my eyes, it is neither just to deprive a legal citizen of his rights, nor just to relieve that citizen of his responsibility to obey the law. In terms of college, this means that a student should not be subject to interference in his or her personal life that he or she did not consent to through a democratic process. It also means that when a student commits a crime, he or she should not be referred to a University judiciary board but subjected to the same laws and punishments as anyone else his or her age. We may pay for a safe environment, but I would like to think that in the United States of America, nobody can pay to be excused to his right or from the law.

This, after all, is what people who argue that college students should not be treated as adults are really arguing. They are, at the core of their argument, asserting that it should be permissible in America to exchange money and privilege for a prolonged childhood that excuses the student from the ethical, moral and occasionally the legal responsibilities of adulthood. It is an argument that is unheard of in other parts of the world and unprecedented even here. If you are comfortable making such an argument, you are free to do so. I, for one, find it obscene.