“A Slow Descent Into Madness”: How We Become Adults, and How Adulthood Becomes Us
Image credit: Saturday Night Live, National Broadcasting Company
Oxford Dictionary defines adulthood as “the length of time that a person has lived or a thing has existed.” Though the concept is easy enough to comprehend on these terms, the confusion seeps in when the sectioning begins. In the United States, the first major divide occurs at age 18, when you legally become an adult. But according to real-life teens (current and previous), this journey can’t be pinned down in a moment, legal or otherwise. In fact, like many other lessons learned in teenagehood, it’s more complicated than it seems.
As an actual adult—both legally and self-identified—Sequoyah Spanish teacher Nicole Legnani reflected on questions of development throughout one’s formative years. When she was younger, she explained, “I thought that being an adult would be a form of liberation, which it is. I have full ownership and agency over the decisions I make in life. I think, once you reach adulthood, you realize that childhood and its restrictions and the way in which many decisions are placed in the hands of your parents or guardians can be its own form of liberation, in the sense that you're free of those kinds of considerations.” Legnani suggested that the adult sphere must confront the “bureaucracy of life”—responsibilities such as taxes, doctor’s appointments, driving, etc.—which leaves little time for the creative freedom and adventures encouraged in one’s childhood and adolescent years.
Legnani recounted one such memorable adventure: “[One time when] I thought I was an adult was when I was traveling with my boyfriend at the time in Peru and I was in the northern Amazon and we decided to take a day trip… I didn't realize that the bus only passed once a week. So we hitched a ride back on a potato truck. It was actually a fantastic experience, in that this is a very common way of transportation for folks who aren't able to wait for that weekly bus ride, so there was companionship, and there was camaraderie.” Recalling her travels, Legnani laughed and commented, “When I look at it in hindsight, I think it was kind of irresponsible, and also I never told my parents about it. The fact that I didn't tell them, I think, is an indicator that I actually wasn’t an adult.” By this logic, adulthood is demonstrated and not instantaneously conferred—a theme that other interviewees, including Luca DiMassa’ 27, agreed with.
For DiMassa, who serves as Sequoyah’s Queer Affinity head and K-12 Connections Subcommittee Co-Chair, the transformation to an adult doesn’t occur in a moment—instead, this phenomenon occurs in a “spiral towards the pit of the unknown.” In his opinion, like Legnani, adulthood is equated with real-world consequences; thus, one can be fully grown without inhabiting the role of an adult. “For example, an adult is someone who’s like, ‘Oh, I really want to go to this concert.’ If they don't have the money, they can’t go to the concert. That’s why I think there are some legal-age people who aren’t adults. I don’t think many billionaires’ adult children qualify as adults because as long as their parents are giving them money, they’re fine.”
To further complicate the picture of dependent vs. independent, DiMassa drew attention to different social standards attempting to quantify adulthood: “I think that adulthood being at 18 makes sense in our [United States] culture, because the way history works is that definitions come later. We set up these systems where people typically live in the house until they're roughly 18, and then they go to college. Even though your brain hasn’t stopped developing until you’re 25, in our culture, it’s bad if a 25-year-old is living at home. It’s seen [as], ‘Oh, they haven’t become an adult yet.’ But what is crazy to me is that we can get drafted for the military, but we can't drink at 18.” (DiMassa stated that he had no intention of underage drinking, and was analyzing the policy from a purely practical standpoint.) And is DiMassa an adult? No, he proclaimed. “One, because I’m not eighteen. Two, because I still have joy in my eyes.”
For Rachel Youngstrom ’26, adulthood is responsibility—responsibility she claims she is not yet saddled with, despite an impressive resume of Sequoyah leadership work. (Youngstrom was elected student government co-president of Sequoyah’s lower school in her eighth grade year, along with now high-school co-president Wiley Bouchard ’26, and is currently the co-editor in chief of The Barefoot Times, along with her colleague Harper Gowen ’26. Additionally, Youngstrom holds the title of Sequoyah’s only Stewardship chair who has served consecutively since freshman year.) Nevertheless, Youngstrom asserted that she “enjoy[s] the privileges that come with being a teenager and a child.” One thing that Youngstrom consistently drew attention to during her interview was the importance of support for people of any age. She cited her ninth grade experience at Sequoyah as an example: “You have all of these new responsibilities, but you also have a lot of help. But when you turn 18 a few years later, you're considered an adult and you’re cut off from your support systems, and I think that’s bad. And it’s scary, as a person who’s almost 18.” Perhaps Youngstrom’s fears, echoed by DiMassa, speak not only to the difficulties of maturation, but the lack of systemic support for young adults fumbling to find themselves.
When it comes to entry into adulthood, we reckon with the unknown in an attempt to demystify it, thereby developing ourselves in the process. Whether that unknown is paying taxes, driving yourself to school, or any other archetypical event associated with adulthood—our childhoods all end at some point.