I am not an adult. I am a lie.

For some silly reason, I thought I’d have my life together by now. How hard could it be? However, the older I get, the more apparent it becomes that my life is a conglomeration of fragments held together with crusty masking tape. I am not an adult. I am a lie. I may do my own laundry and have my own bank account, but when it comes down to it, I’d much rather hide from life behind my stuffed animals and neglected dishes. And to think…people my age have families. With babies.

I’m lucky to have kept myself alive for this long. I couldn’t imagine being responsible for something that doesn’t respawn.

In honor of my last semester of undergrad starting today, I thought I would tell you a lovely story about how a senior in college can ruin absolutely everything by ignoring the problem.

SPOILER ALERT

Moral of the Story: Do NOT ignore the problem under any circumstances.

I don’t know if any of my readers are parents, but even if you’re not, imagine this: you get a bill in the mail for $16,000. Oh yes. I neglected to fill out a “randomized survey” that my school sent out. (I say it’s “randomized” because I got selected to fill it out every year. And every year, I made my mother handle it.) I’m a fairly organized person, so when I make a to-do list, I prioritize. Things related to school and work are always at the top. Little things like surveys are at the bottom. My to-do list remained packed full of school and work related items for most of the semester, so I didn’t even touch that survey until my mom called me with news about that little bill.

I forsook the natural order of my to-do list and decided to deal with the problem. One little survey. Easy. If I could hammer out an A-worthy 1200 word essay in less than 3 hours, I could complete a silly little survey. I took one look at it, saw the words “call the IRS” and decided to let my mother handle it. Again. That’s what parents are for after all. She handled the problem (as usual), and I thought that was that.

Until my mother received another bill.

Two threatening bills for $16,000. I had to do it. Not her. Me. Myself. I had to do the thing. I finally worked up the courage to put on my big-girl pants and made the phone call. I sat on that phone for hours trying to get information that didn’t even exist. HOURS. (Note: It was probably 30 minutes.) And then I spent the rest of the week running between the financial aid office and my adviser’s office in tears because I knew my mother would kill me for putting this off. (I should probably add that I put this survey off for at least four months. You might say that I’m a PROcrastinator.)

This whole mess climaxed into a messy explosion of, “I can’t adult!” in one of my meetings with my adviser. How in the world was I supposed to balance this $16,000 mistake with my schoolwork, jobs, and other responsibilities? I wanted to disappear under my flannel unicorn sheets and never come out.

In the end, I resolved my $16,000 mistake. I actually don’t remember how I did it. Part of me wants to believe that the financial aid office became so fed up with me that they decided to let it “disappear.” But there’s a slight chance I did something right.

I’m aware that this story makes me sound like a whiny brat and not a 21 year old college senior. (You’re probably thinking, “They let his girl into college?”) I should know how to do all of this by now. But hasn’t everyone had to learn a “how to adult” lesson the hard way? Suddenly, I turn 21 and taxes, full-time jobs, and pantsuits are a frightening yet boring reality. Real world problems are terrifying, but at least I know how to deal with one of them now.

NOTE: Next week is recruitment week for the sororities at my school. As such, all ladies in a sorority are required to deactivate social media. (There are a lot of rules that go along with recruitment.) To stay out of trouble, I will not be posting next Tuesday. Hopefully you will see me on Friday however!