good night. p.s. the bugs are not bad

It's been a long time since I've written. Itchy trigger fingers are yearning for something beyond analytical essays to type.

I'm a first-generation university student by definition. My grandparents didn't go to college; however my parents did for a bit. In fact, while dating, they both attended seperate universities for a while and they hated it. Without even telling each other they quit on the same day. That makes that my favorite story ever, but it also makes me a first-generation student.

I guess this makes me special, going in for the long haul and whatnot. There's a student organization on campus specifically delegated to telling me so, it must be true.

Maybe it is. These past few years have been a lifetime, but not a long enough lifetime to say I know I am an adult. I have no idea when you officially become an adult. On my 21st birthday I recieved an e-mail from one of the wisest people I know and she wrote:
                        It happened overnight!  A minor no longer...  a major forever more.

Forever? I have to be an adult forever now? That's a long time. And I keep looking, but there doesn't seem to have been any changes. Nothing physical I can find, no tail or anything, no signage on me that appeared that said, "Official adult" like the packaging of USDA certified organic. How do I know when I'm certified mature?

Often she would joke that incoming freshman (or 'freshpeople' as she is like to say) are students, and not fully real people yet because one must always denote if you're a student. Does my age make me a real people now?

My mom and dad, fantastic people that they would be, never experienced this,... what is it? Extended pre-adulthood? How do you explain my experience of major-ing and lack thereof of feeling?
I've been sitting on that for a while now. I'll take suggestions from the audience. The best I can explain it so far is comparable to some work I've read on.

Three hundred students taken out in to the wilderness for a week. Alone.
The beginnings of an urban legend? Not quite. Before the study, the students answered a few questions. One being, "If you could change yourself in any way, what would it be?" Most answers were physical, taller, stronger and my favorite being: "a little more bigger".

After the Outdoor Challenge, the kids filled out some questionnaires and all the general descriptive boring psychobabble was concluded, but their journals were deep, man. I didn't think most people could become so retrospective. This is what they got:

"I don't understand it I just feel so much alive I want to yell and scream and tell everybody."


"When I go home I know I will want to tell my friends about this experience. I will become frustrated and bitchy because either I won't have the words or they won't have the ears."

Reading these I just nod my head. THAT'S IT! Please someone explain this to people when they ask me why I seem 'out of it'. I need one of thse kids, who are probably well into their forties now, to be my day-to-day translator. Like a signer at a play, but more like my daily sidekick. I want to explain this minature metamorphisis I'm feeling but it's just not clicking with others. Quarter-life crisis much?
My experiences have told my old vocabulary to beat it and now it's replacing it with something completely improved and sometimes it feels like I'm speaking a different language. I don't have the words, but then again, does everyone else have the ears?