Published in On Our Selection News December 19, 2013

There is a big difference between being of age and a grown up.

I fear I am facing my first Christmas as an actual “grown up”. I’ve been legally able to smash $3 basics at shoddy licensed establishments and buy funeral expenses cover for almost four years now, yet I have not been considered a grown up. Technically, I am of age, but I am not what one would consider to be “mature”. While I have zipped myself into a pencil skirt (a tight tube of fabric that epitomises female professionalism) a few times this year, I also managed to make a slightly inap- propriate joke about drunk dialing with a mayor I was inter- viewing after I was given his phone number (whilst wearing said professional tube of fabric). It seems a have a way to go before coming off as sophisticated professional woman.

Thankfully, this lack of couthness and the ability to manage finances has been excused by my status as a student. It is totally acceptable to live from payday to payday, drink boxed wine and wear trackpants in public when you’re enrolled in some form of tertiary institution. However, this all changed last week when I partook in the final costume party I was likely to ever attend at my hallowed university campus: my graduation.

I donned a cap and gown to be ceremoniously handed an empty lino-covered cylinder by someone important (The idea of the cylinder is that you have something to do with your hands on stage without the risk of creasing your degree certificate. Be- yond the 3.567 seconds you’re on stage, the cylinder is pretty much useless. I worked four years for a fancy spaghetti container). As soon as that hollow tube was thrust into my hands by a bored uni official, so too was the expectation for me to get my life together. This is what I aimed to do “when I grew up”.

I picture grown ups to have savings plans, have a sensible hair cut and actually enjoy dry wine (rather than just buying it because it’s cheap). They don’t spend all their money on eating pulled pork all weekend or plan on forcing their family to drink heavily spiked hot chocolate after waking them up at 5am on Christmas morning (get keen Mum!). I wouldn’t mind being a fully functional adult, but then I also wouldn’t mind being on the receiving end of the ultimate slip’n’slide for Christmas.

I feel like the Technically-Of-Age-Dannielle and Grown-Up- Dannielle are in conflict with each other, and the much louder Technically-Of-Age-Dannielle is winning. But maybe it doesn’t have to be a competition. Looking to my oldest sister for wis- dom (something I rarely do), I get the impression that there is perhaps no one moment where something clicks and you sud- denly you’re a grown up. I look to my Dad and I am assured that this is definitely not the case. Perhaps being an adult is about balance. Perhaps the two Dannielles can co-exist; I can be a classy dame AND a stumbling menace in a suggestively sloganned Christmas shirt this festive season.

However just in case, my student ID is valid until the end of 2014, so technically I am a grown up, but I am also considered a student in the eyes of Translink. Therefore, I still have one year left of being a cash-trapped, goon guzzling scumbag.