Influx of Younger Students Remind Columnist How He’s Matured

I’m a fossil, a relic, an antique: old—or I’m going to be. Granted, I’m only 20 but a large portion of my friends and peers in organizations are younger than me. For a while, many of my Facebook friends were joining a group called: “I was born in the 90s.”

Wait, what, I asked myself. How is this possible? My baby brother was born in 1994!

Often age doesn’t even faze me. It’s the sneaky young ones, the ones that are “mature for their age,” that get you, make you forget that those guys and girls are only 18 or 19.

There’s not really much difference between the new freshmen and I; being born August 26, 1989, I barely squeezed into the 80s.

Still, my 80s brethren and sistren were always older. They had longer curfews, watched rated R movies (legally) earlier, graduated from high school earlier, and turned 21 first (tragically leaving me behind at bars, sad as a wet puppy).

Among my friends, I was the baby. I looked up to them, and they watched out for me. They ran the organizations and took care of business.

Now I’m running organizations, delegating tasks and trying to take care of business. Students are asking me for advice, wondering where things are and how to take care of some problem or another. They look to me now.
After this year, nearly all of my older friends will have graduated, leaving me—and the rest of the class of 2011—as the elder classmen.

The ones who are supposed to know exactly what to do and have their lives mapped out. We graduate in a year, supposedly prepared to enter the “real world,” the vast enigmatic territory that has very little to do with the trashy MTV show. Now that’s a frightening concept (the graduating, not the lack of gratuitous booze and sex in the “real world.”)

What these younger kids forced me to realize is that I’m growing up, not simply in terms of age, but maturity. It’s not something I often reflect upon, how much I’ve matured. I’m busy scrambling to write papers, establish some semblance of a love life and still go clubbing every once in a while. It takes someone’s birthday or a Facebook group to make you realize, I’m turning 21 next year, graduating next year and hopefully continuing my studies in graduate school.

Gradually, my friends and fellow members of Quilt, the literary magazine, graduated. The texture of open mics changed, the good old faces that faithfully showed up have completely changed.

Even at the Minaret things have evolved: members came and went, advisers changed and by next year, I’ll have worked with three editors-in-chiefs and someone will have this job.

Nostalgia sets in and a strange possessiveness, everything that you knew as UT—friends, professors, places and everything else that defines your college experience—has transformed.

Does anyone remember Urso as Kennedy? The buildings that were where the Chapel now stands? Fanny Pack Kid? When The Retreat was more lax?

It’s become more common for me to reminisce with my friends about something then have to explain what I’m talking about or simply say, “Oh right, you weren’t around when that happened.”

As soon as you settle in and think being a college student isn’t that bad when it gets down to it, you’ve got a diploma and UT wants you out of the your dorm.

No more tuition, but it’s time to pay rent, maintenance fees and student loans.

I don’t have a Peter Pan Complex nor maturity issues, but sometimes it seems as if maturity has been foisted upon me. How am I supposed to sort out my life with no adviser or OSLE to go to? And Spartan Dollars work at Publix, unfortunately.

Thanks freshmen for causing me to reflect on all this. Thanks for depressing me (just kidding).

But time passes and here we are. Old friends gone, new friends here and ready to inherit what we’ve called home for potentially the past four years. And maturity has marked us in its way, or perhaps it hasn’t, still the world expects much of us now, I’ve slowly realized.

But, in a strange way, isn’t this partially what we came to college for? Certainly, education and clubbing and engaging ourselves in new experiences, abut college is primer for our adult lives, whether we notice or not.

Derrick Austin can be reached at daustin@ut.edu.