Think of who you were 10 years ago. Close your eyes and visualize it. Think of how different you were — and the ways that you have stayed the same.
Would your younger self be surprised at you now?
Adulthood is a time of change. People find jobs, graduate, fall in love, deal with loss, feel joy and experience a myriad of other emotions.
Adulthood can be scary — but just because you and the world around you are changing, it doesn’t have to be negative, students and experts said.
“I don’t think it’s bad getting older or aging or reaching adulthood,” senior Pinn Jingkaojai said. “It’s whatever you feel like and whatever you characterize it as, like at the end of the day, it’s just a characterization. But it’s fun, growing up is fun.”
Moving the Markers
Sociology Professor Eric Sevareid said one can consider adulthood in legal terms — at 18 years old — or as the stage where the brain reaches full development, around 24 to 27 years old.
While people now recognize that human beings mature in stages, historically, the concept of adolescence didn’t always exist, Sevareid said. Society used to treat teens as functioning adults, and today various cultures define adulthood in different ways.
Experts now increasingly use the term “emerging adulthood,” Sevareid said.
“The reason why there’s this young adult versus a full adult now is because the markers for what we consider to be normal adulthood have been delayed,” Sevareid said.
Sevareid said these markers — starting a career, owning a home, completing education and having a family — are happening later in life.
“Emerging adults, this concept is different because they’re fully grown working people,” Sevareid said. “They’ve had relationships, so it’s not like they’re not in romantic involvements.”
Marriage and other markers have been delayed as much as 10 years, Sevareid said.
“They’re spending more time sort of figuring out their career, relationship, life in their late 20s or in their 30s,” Sevareid said.
What is Adulthood
Author Kelly Williams Brown said when she decided to write her book, “Adulting: How to Become A Grown-Up in 468 — now 535 — Easy(ish) Steps,” she had been out of school for about five years but remembered the “freeform” feeling that accompanied the lack of structure post-college.
Brown concluded nobody ever really feels like an adult.
“For me, a point of growth has been sort of letting go of ideas of exactly who I think I should be,” Brown said.
Junior Noelle Cottingham said to her, adulthood is the period in life when someone is ready to take on complete responsibility for both oneself and other people.
“It’s where you can begin to enter into marital or really significant relationships,” Cottingham said.
These relationships can be between friends, family members or — as Cottingham said — a time to solidify one’s relationship with their faith.
“So you should be searching for answers, searching for truth, and learning how to defend your faith so that you can be a means for other people to be brought to God,” Cottingham said.
Cottingham said she is not sure if anyone ever feels like they are an adult, or that anyone even knows what it truly means to be one.
“I do feel as though I can handle responsibility,” Cottingham said. “And I think in that way, I would argue I’m mature enough to be a candidate for the title. But now I don’t necessarily feel like I’m an adult.”
Jingkaojai said adulthood is simply being one’s own parent.
“That doesn’t only mean making sure I’m on top of things,” Jingkaojai said. “But also making sure I’m taken care of mentally, physically, even socially or spiritually.”
Jingkaojai said she is still preparing for adulthood — learning how to take care of herself best.
There is a difference between being mature and being an adult, Jingkaojai said, and the difference is not just a matter of age or financial stability.
“Once you’re an adult, you’re fully sustainable in a healthy way,” Jingkaojai said. “Like sometimes maturing comes out of something not so healthy. But I think reaching adulthood is when you can fully be self-sustaining.”
Kyle Cajero, Seaver and Pepperdine Graphic alumnus (‘18) and assistant director of communications in the Pepperdine Athletics department, said his experience after graduation did not meet his expectations. At the time, he was a “naive 22-year-old.” Moving to Sandpoint, Idaho, Cajero was financially independent — a big goal for him.
“That was a pretty adult moment, but I know maturity-wise, I definitely wasn’t an adult,” Cajero said.
Coming from L.A. — and Tuscon, Arizona, where he grew up — Cajero said he was unprepared to live in a small town.
“I was the new hotshot in town from a big private school or from a nice private school and if I were to go back, I would have carried myself a lot differently,” Cajero said.
Pepperdine students are also not used to failure, Cajero said. After graduating, alums might find it frustrating if they have to switch jobs or it takes them a while to find their “spot,” Cajero said.
“The biggest thing that I think seniors need to know is that changing your mind doesn’t equal failure,” Cajero said. “Even changing jobs, that doesn’t mean that you failed, it doesn’t mean that you’ve fallen short of anything. And sometimes when you go through life, an imperfect situation could teach you a lot more than a comfortable situation.”
Adulthood Across Cultures
Age does not automatically make someone an adult. Across various cultures, life at the same age can look different.
Senior Eric Njuku is from Nairobi, Kenya, and there at 18 people can drink alcohol, drive a car and are considered adults, but also still live with their parents.
“Back home, we are held by our parents until we finish college mostly compared to here where people, when they go to college, they’re mostly adults,” Njuku said. “Some people pay for their own school and do their own thing.”
In the United States, Njuku said, he’s seen people whose parents financially support them through college, but also people who are on their own once they turn 18. This blurs the lines of adulthood in some ways — with people in the U.S. adulting “faster.”
While young adults are not “babied” in Kenya, Njuku said there is the expectation that their parents will be there for them and show them how to do traditionally adult things. This led to a culture shock when Njuku began attending college in the United States.
“I didn’t know how to do anything,” Njuku said. “Like insurance, bye, I didn’t even know what insurance was. I don’t even think I had insurance actually.”
In Kenya, Njuku said his dad drove him to and from the ACT standardized test and waited for him there. In the U.S. Njuku said he is expected to get to places on his own — such as the DMV.
“[I was] like an egg being carried everywhere,” Njuku said. “But like here it’s like, ‘OK, go to the DMV.’ And I was literally so scared. And it’s like ‘do this.’ You have to take yourself to your road test.”
For international students, when they come to Pepperdine — and the U.S. — there is a steep learning curve, Njuku said, and distance from family may make it hard to get help from them.
Being an international student added a layer of difficulty to growing up because he had to make sure all his documents were in order while balancing with the added nuance of citizen status and race, Njuku said.
“Just making sure you’re doing the right thing all the time,” Njuku said. “You can’t follow everyone because your fate is not the same.”
The U.S. version of adulthood is very different from where Jingkaojai is from — Chaing Mai, Thailand — which is a more collectivist society.
“People live with their parents forever,” Jingkaojai said. “Literally. They bring their families in and they all just live together, they raise their kids together, like it doesn’t have to be separate.”
Jingkaojai moved to the U.S. when she was 16. She said she noticed people tend to rely on themselves to attain their needs in the States, whereas in Thailand, people accomplish tasks through who they know.
In Thailand, rather than asking “what” one wants, it is more common to ask “who” one should go to, Jingkaojai said.
“The ‘who’ is like a fast-track group, and a community that you can lean on, no matter if they’re a stranger or whatever, as long as you’re part of the community, you’re in,” Jingkaojai said.
While independence can be both good and bad, there is a sense of pride associated with it, Jingkaojai said.
“I don’t think it’s [adulthood] a hurdle,” Jingkaojai said. “It’s just plunging face first into what you want and slowly making your way to getting it. Like not in a big dream way but more in a cookbook kind of way.”
Adulthood and Community
Jingkaojai said she has learned from graduated friends that the first few years after college can be lonely. When searching for community, one needs to be intentional.
“There are ways you can find community even as an adult in the States,” Jingkaojai said. “But you have to look for it.”
While someone’s community can make them happy and be a place where they can express their emotions, there is more to it, Njuku said.
“This side of ‘We are willing to be there for each other,’” Njuku said. “Because if you’re by yourself, you’re adulting by yourself. Having a community is like — because you can’t do it in this world by yourself.”
These communities exist as a two-way street, Njuku said, where help goes both ways.
“When you’re adults, it’s not like everything is going to go seamlessly,” Njuku said. “You might go through things, you might lose a job, you might lose someone. So having a good community is just good.”
When he first began his job, Cajero said he was unaware of how hard it would be to find a social life outside of work — as opposed to growing up with “built-in friends because of school.”
Since graduating college, Cajero doesn’t think he’s made a friend outside of work or dating apps, which he said was “strange” but “not uncommon.” This is nice because it means many of his friends have similar schedules and are understanding of work problems.
“But at the end of the day, on the other hand, I would like to have a friend group and not talk about work nonsense when we’re out of work, if that makes any sense,” Cajero said.
One’s 20s are about finding oneself, Brown said, and drawing on one’s community to learn how to interact with the world around them. One’s 30 is when they typically learn how to be a part of a community — and take care of other people.
“Community is absolutely crucial and central to who we are as humans and at different times we have different things to offer our communities,” Brown said. “Thinking about what are my strengths and my gifts, and how can I use those to the benefit of people around me?”
Community isn’t tit-for-tat, Brown said.
“The older you get, the more you realize that there is an inherent value just to [being an] ongoing presence in each other’s lives,” Brown said. “But that doesn’t happen if you can’t forgive and let things go and accept people as they are.
As a junior and out-of-state student, Cottingham said she is beginning to think about what and where her future community will be.
“Am I going to stay here and try to be around people that I love now, and I’m really good friends with?” Cottingham said. “Should I go home?”
Because she has grown up with three younger sisters, Cottingham said she has wanted to be a mother since she was a little girl. She said she will feel that she’s reached adulthood once she can start to take care of others.
“Knowing that love is sacrificial, you orient yourself toward wanting them [the people you love] to be fulfilled and happy,” Cottingham said.
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Contact Samantha Torre via Twitter (@Sam_t394) or email: sam.torre@pepperdine.edu
