2008 Woodie Awards
Girl Talk
Grow up: How college can contribute to students becoming adults
Victoria Webbe
Issue date: 2/15/08 Section: Opinion
I remember hearing grown-ups when I was little talk about what a lovely young woman I was turning into and, even then, being called a woman felt strange. Once, when I was 15, I was at a block party with my sister tossing around a Frisbee we'd found. A mom had to grab her toddler right before he ran in between us, telling him to "watch out for the ladies." That felt even stranger. Even now, when, hopefully, the most awkward stages of my life are behind me, calling myself a woman feels just a little odd.
We live in a society that has a lot of words that define our genders, our ages and our levels of maturity. Girl, boy, guy, lady, woman, man-there are all these words, and yet I have absolutely no idea how to use them.
Maybe it doesn't really matter what we call ourselves. But when a high school-aged employee says, "Excuse me, ma'am," as he pushes a cart past me, I can't help but shudder and do the math. At most, I am six years older than this kid. What about those six years makes us so different?
Legally, you are considered an adult at 18-even if you can't drink until you're 21. How many of the rest of us really feel like men and women on our 18th birthday? Heck, I'm 21 and I still don't feel like an adult. So where do we draw the line? Does it even matter?
The words we use to talk about ourselves and others complicate the way we view ourselves and others. After all, does it really mean anything different when you start calling yourself a woman or a man?
In my opinion, these words have inherent societal connotations of responsibility and expectations-including pretty staunch he-man, she-woman gender implications-that can't be taken lightly. At a time in our lives when we're trying to find ourselves and figure out what we want to do with our lives before we venture out into the real world, how we talk about ourselves is crucial. College can act as a kind of child-adult limbo, and, depending on our socio-economic backgrounds, we already have varying degrees of real-world responsibilities affecting what that means. Some of us have a job-or jobs. Most of us have student loans paying for part or all of our tuition. And a few of us don't have to worry about anything bigger than where we're going to go for dinner on the weekends. None of us are on the same playing field of responsibility, so it's not surprising that we don't all call ourselves women and men.
We live in a society that has a lot of words that define our genders, our ages and our levels of maturity. Girl, boy, guy, lady, woman, man-there are all these words, and yet I have absolutely no idea how to use them.
Maybe it doesn't really matter what we call ourselves. But when a high school-aged employee says, "Excuse me, ma'am," as he pushes a cart past me, I can't help but shudder and do the math. At most, I am six years older than this kid. What about those six years makes us so different?
Legally, you are considered an adult at 18-even if you can't drink until you're 21. How many of the rest of us really feel like men and women on our 18th birthday? Heck, I'm 21 and I still don't feel like an adult. So where do we draw the line? Does it even matter?
The words we use to talk about ourselves and others complicate the way we view ourselves and others. After all, does it really mean anything different when you start calling yourself a woman or a man?
In my opinion, these words have inherent societal connotations of responsibility and expectations-including pretty staunch he-man, she-woman gender implications-that can't be taken lightly. At a time in our lives when we're trying to find ourselves and figure out what we want to do with our lives before we venture out into the real world, how we talk about ourselves is crucial. College can act as a kind of child-adult limbo, and, depending on our socio-economic backgrounds, we already have varying degrees of real-world responsibilities affecting what that means. Some of us have a job-or jobs. Most of us have student loans paying for part or all of our tuition. And a few of us don't have to worry about anything bigger than where we're going to go for dinner on the weekends. None of us are on the same playing field of responsibility, so it's not surprising that we don't all call ourselves women and men.
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