18 Truths That Become Self-Evident When You Turn 18

On your 18th birthday, you will wake up as an Adult, having seamlessly transformed from the fledgling garbage baby you were for 17 years. But in this case, age isn’t just a number. There are things that happen when you turn 18 that nobody will warn you about. Well, nobody except me. I’m on your side. Here’s what you can expect from your magical, mystical year of sudden adulthood:

1. There is no instruction manual. We are all just lemmings running off the cliffs of life. You will not feel like an Adult, but that doesn’t change the fact that you are now a pile of stress and confusion shaped like an Adult human, just like the rest of us.

2. Good morning. It’s 2 PM, and you missed class because Mom’s not here to wake you up anymore. Even if you’ve been heaving your sleep-deprived carcass out of bed at ungodly hours to catch the bus for years, the parental units were always a safety blanket. No longer.

3. There are going to be situations where you are not just an Adult, but the Adult. You’ll find yourself the only technical grown-up in the surrounding area, and as soon as somebody falls off of something or eats something they shouldn’t have, you’ll become the alpha of the situation just by default.

4. You’ll be “getting too old for this” before you know it. Staying up until 4 in the morning? I’d rather die. Someone give me some taxes to do.

5. The youths will scare you. Give me a choice between an eighth grader and a lightly chained grizzly bear, and I’ll pick bear every time.

6. You’ll suddenly understand the stock market. I’m hoping that by throwing this one in here, I can make it a reality. Dividends? Short selling? Bullish trends? I’ve got nothing.

7. You can vote. And if you’re on a college campus, since this is an election year, everyone within a 50-mile radius will make sure that you do.

8. Congratulations! You’re officially a cog in the system. Whether you’ve been toiling away at your local Dairy Queen ’til now or simply relying on charity from Mom and Dad, having a job and making money takes on a whole new meaning when you turn 18. You’re not just repurposing hard-earned cash into X-Boxes and tacos; you’re contributing.

9. People will expect you to know how to do things just by virtue of your age. People expect me to know how to make adult phone calls or parallel park a car without crying, and it overwhelms me.

10. Coolness and all things technology will get away from you. It hasn’t happened yet—you’ve still got some years left—but you’ll see this inevitability looming closer like a speck on the doomsday horizon. According to my 15-year-old cousin, I stopped being cool in circa 2012.

11. Eating whatever you damn well please will become equal parts 1) a rare treat and 2) an existentially fraught disaster. In the careless youth days, you shoveled edible trash into your trash face heedless of the consequences. Now you will mostly continue doing this, but with the added knowledge that your body is rotting away.

12. You’ll have your last summer vacation, and you might not even know it. Internships, job opportunities, study abroad programs—these things will crop up unexpectedly and ruin your previous plans, which included sleeping for eighteen hours straight and not knowing the day of the week. And that’s okay. This might seem like an “OH, GOD, MY CHILDHOOD IS JUST PASSING ME BY” moment, but trust me—your priorities will realign. Eventually you’ll be trading summers for ACTUAL WEEKENDS where you don’t have to be constantly doing homework and stressing about that quiz on Monday. It’s a fair trade.

13. Your brain will re-do its entire concept of cash. You’re no longer cruising around on borrowed gas money—now you’re in charge of all your financial assets (so basically the ten dollars crumpled up in your pocket), and it’s yours to waste on chicken nuggets as you see fit.

14. You’ll look back on the days of ye olde high school with a sort of nostalgia. Even if they sucked, which they probably did.

15. Also, you’ll realize just how inconsequential high school really was. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter that you went to homecoming alone or that only four people in the whole school even knew who you were. When you graduate, it’ll be like you finally finished the tutorial in a video game and it’s time to start for real.

16. You’ll become responsible whether you actively plan for this to happen or not. Nobody wants to languish away in a pile of their own disheveled crap-life, so you’ll learn to fend for yourself—you’ll do laundry at regular intervals, you’ll cook healthy stuff, you’ll go to Home Depot and buy shelves. And it’ll be awesome.

17. The world will become your oyster, technically. Like, you don’t have to go to school anymore. If you’re there, you’re choosing to be there. If you’re somewhere else, that was your choice, too. After nearly eighteen years of being told where to go and what to do, it’s kind of empowering.

18. “Adulthood” is just a concept we made up. Capital-A Adults don’t actually exist. Becoming an adult doesn’t mean suddenly getting serious and figuring stuff out; it means coming into your own. It means you’re constantly learning things, making choices, and evolving into a better you. Whether your definition of adulting involves eating the occasional vegetable or just mass-consuming grilled cheese sandwiches because who the hell’s going to tell you not to, well, that’s your call. But that’s the point: it’s your call. You’re 18 now. You’re making calls. And whether you know what the stock market is or not, there’s something to be said for making it this far and knowing that the good part is just beginning.

Are you 18 yet? Do you feel like a real-live ADULT? Do you finally understand the stock market? Yeah, us neither.