Angela Marie Stefano

If you said that these are the best days of our lives
Other people turn around and laugh at you
If you said that these are the best days of our lives
Other people break into a cold sweat
If you said that these are the best days of their lives
And other people turn around and laugh at you
If you said that these are the best days of our lives”
(Blur)

If you know me, you know that I’m usually the one to get all melodramatic, and my boyfriend/friends are the ones to calm me down. So, last night, having Dave call me in a funk about work/summer being dull/life being boring/etc etc., it was rather disconcerting.

The sayings all tell us that high school is the best time of our lives. No, wait — college is the best four years of your life. No, summer is the best time. It goes on and on and on.

I refuse to believe that I have even experienced the best time in my life yet. Yes, high school, college and “real” summer (i.e., no work, just fun) were all great, but if the best years of my life — of any of our lives — are over by the time we hit our early 20s, then what’s the point?

Dave and Nick, I guess, commiserated last night about how their summer internships really aren’t all they thought they would be, and that if doing what they’re doing is what real work is like — well, they don’t know how they’re going to do it.

It’s not like I haven’t had those moments, too. There was the breakdown in a Garden bathroom when I realized that I just wanted to be out having fun, not working, even if it was working the Stanley Cup Finals. There are the moments now when I think I’m a total failure because I graduated, don’t have a job, and am spending my days laying around my house doing nothing (it’s boring, let me tell you. I definitely have no wish to do this forever). And there are those times when I really, really just want to quit my stupid retail job because I can’t face the thought of sitting around in a mall for another night.

So, yeah, life might not be all fun and games like it was when we were little. But there is no way most adults would tell you, with a straight face, that life after college is worthless. We’re all going to college so we can get a job we like. We’re doing those internships and retail jobs so we realize grunt work sucks, and we don’t want to do it forever. Everything we’re doing and experiencing right now is helping us figure out what we need to do so life after college, until we die (a long, long, long time from now), is the best time of our lives.

Think about it — we’re (OK, the rest of you are) going to graduate college. We’re going to get awesome jobs that we can use our degrees for and that we love. I have a feeling I know people who are going to own their own companies or be really important. We’re going to turn 21, get married, have kids. And, you know what? We’re going to have a damn good time doing it all.

Life is not over at 20. We may not have summers off, and we may have a lot more responsibility, and there may be times we don’t always like what we’re doing and we want to complain. But there will always be friends there to listen to us complain. And there will always be friends there to point out how much fun we still have. That’s what growing up is.

But if growing up really is that bad, why do we all do it? See what I mean?

And, I don’t know about you, but I’m quite thankful that summer, childhood, high school, college, etc. weren’t the best years of my life.